<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Gotham Waynes by Yidkirkin</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27109795">The Gotham Waynes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yidkirkin/pseuds/Yidkirkin'>Yidkirkin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Animated Series, Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010), DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adopted Children, Alfred Pennyworth is the Best, American Sign Language, Batfamily (DCU), Bruce Wayne is Bad at Feelings, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Family, Family History, Famous Wayne Family, Gen, Good Grandparent Alfred Pennyworth, POV Alternating, Sibling Bonding, Unconventional Families, batman slices jasons neck for some reason thing, except in regards to under the red hood comic, i prefer the movie and dont jive with the whole, i stick to canon as close as i can, its when bruce goes through the time stream in batman rip</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:41:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>22,049</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27109795</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yidkirkin/pseuds/Yidkirkin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There's more to being a member of a family like the Waynes than charity galas. There's more to being the heir of Bruce Wayne than following in his footsteps and loving Gotham so much, you would do anything to protect it. There's a history, a weight to the name, and expectations that come out of it. And each of the new Wayne children have to learn this.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alfred Pennyworth &amp; Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth &amp; Damian Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth &amp; Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne &amp; Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain &amp; Alfred Pennyworth, Dick Grayson &amp; Alfred Pennyworth, No Romantic Relationship(s), Tim Drake &amp; Alfred Pennyworth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>229</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Bruce Wayne and his ever growing batfam</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Richard John Grayson-Wayne</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Author's Note; I own nothing, and I go by the Marie Kondo method of referrencing canon -if it doesn't spark joy, throw it out.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Master Richard, if you would wait a moment.”</p><p>Dick paused halfway out of his chair and looked over to where Bruce was waiting for him in the doorway. His guardian obviously noticed his confusion –usually Alfred was content to have the kitchen to himself in the wake of a meal, given he was the only one who really understood where everything was stored –but instead of suggesting Alfred explain, Bruce just shrugged. He picked up both his own and Dick’s dirty dishes and went to deposit them in the sink, and before he was shooed out of the room he leaned over to pat Dick on the back, like he was going to need something steadying. Dick’s frown grew.</p><p>There was a lot he was still getting used to even after living in Wayne Manor for three months. The fact he knew about Bruce’s nighttime habits was practically the only thing that made it all easier to bear, since it was a straightforward, uncomplicated way for the two of them to spend time together that didn’t require either of them to talk about their <em>feelings.</em> But besides the crime-fighting, practically every aspect of this new life of his threw Dick for a loop.</p><p>At first it had only been the unfamiliarity of it all; the loneliness and isolation of the Manor compared to the circus, the empty space and expensive heirlooms in place of Dick’s childhood trailer with its cheap, used <em>everything. </em>Then it had been the people recognizing him wherever he went, but not because he was a <em>Flying Grayson, </em>one of the best aerialists on the planet, but because Bruce had taken him in. Not because of his own merits, but merely from who he was connected to.</p><p>Living with Bruce and Alfred was even stranger, though he had come to really like them by now. Bruce, who wanted to spend time with him but was always so busy, who wore different personas like swapping out hats, who was a staunch introvert in contrast to the plethora of extroverts who had helped his Mom and Dad raise him since birth. Alfred too, proper and stern but with a quiet, sarcastic sense of humour Dick hadn’t ever encountered before, who wasn’t <em>really </em>a servant despite the title he held, who was always moving and knew <em>everything.</em></p><p>It was in the way they only used the dining room on Sunday nights, how Dick had already grown used to Alfred’s late-night hot chocolate after patrol, that one off-hand remark about how he used to train for his family’s act brought, two weeks later, an actual <em>aerial course</em> down in the Batcave. It was learning that despite Alfred’s word to the contrary he really didn’t mind if Dick wanted to follow him around the Manor all day –but even at his side the older man never asked him to do anything besides set the table. It was discovering that when Bruce was home, Alfred didn’t even need to ask.</p><p>“What’s up, Alfred?”</p><p>While the butler started on the dishes, Dick jumped up to sit on the countertop closest to the wall, grinning brightly as Alfred levelled him with a raised eyebrow before he sighed and went back to scrubbing. Dick had quickly gained perching rights through sheer stubborn determination and a promise that he would stop swinging up and into the chandelier in the entrance hall.</p><p>“Now that you are officially a member of the household-” the paperwork to make Bruce his legal guardian had finally been laid to rest not even a week ago, now, “-I decided it was high time to sort out a few important tasks. Consider your afternoon spoken for, unless you have pressing homework?”</p><p>Dick knew that Alfred knew he had nothing of the sort. “I’ve got nothing, so that’s fine.” Alfred nodded sharply and rinsed the plates before he set them in the drying rack. “What kind of tasks? Wayne Enterprises stuff?” Dick hoped not.</p><p>“Only tangentially,” Alfred picked up the big tureen he had served the soup in and dried it off with a towel before he handed it to Dick with exceeding care. “Would you return this to the cabinet in the service cupboard? There’s a lad.”</p><p>When Dick returned the sink was drained and free of suds and Alfred was just placing the leftovers in the fridge for Dick’s school lunch the next day. Rolling his sleeves back down as he went, Alfred motioned for Dick to follow him out of the kitchen and back into the Manor’s main foyer, and then up the stairs to the second floor.</p><p>Wayne Manor was the largest house Dick had ever been in, although he knew that when it came to rich people Bruce’s living situation was rather understated. The Manor had the Batcave as the ‘basement’, a sprawling main floor and an upper floor with too many rooms for the three people who now called it home. There were places so shrouded in shadow and memories of years gone by that even in his worst moments of boredom, Dick hadn’t dared venture into them.</p><p>When they passed the door to Bruce’s sitting room it was shut, which meant he must have received a call while Dick and Alfred cleaned up after lunch. Alfred led him over to one of the guest bedrooms, the one with the creepy hidden window that let whoever was in the Lady Sister’s bedroom (exactly the sort of place Dick never stepped foot in, because before they were killed it had been Martha and Thomas Wayne’s room) spy on guests, and he picked up a wrapped package which almost looked like it could be a picture frame, if it was nearly as tall as Dick himself. By now Dick felt like his nervous chatter would be inappropriate, somehow, because it was clear that whatever this was it wasn’t some simple ‘task’. They were both quiet as they descended the main stairs and walked over to the gallery, where Alfred carefully placed the package against a wall and beckoned Dick over to one of the oldest paintings.</p><p>The gallery was also a part of the Manor that Dick avoided, mostly because he had never once seen Bruce spend more than a fleeting second in there either –even if he had to go out to the conservatory while it was raining, Dick preferred to take the outside walkway rather than pass the paintings and odd trinkets that littered the space. Alfred appeared completely comfortable among the suits of armour and stiff, dour colours that surrounded them.</p><p>“Contrary to popular belief, people do not spring fully formed into adulthood like Athena from Zeus’ forehead,” they stopped at the wall on the far left side of the gallery, the closest to the entrance hall and right next to the stairs that led up and into the guest wing. “Nor, for that matter, does a family. They all must start somewhere, and the Waynes are no exception.”</p><p>Alfred reached out and pushed aside a short curtain to reveal an embroidered tapestry about as tall as Dick but probably at least twenty times as old as he was. At the bottom where the fabric was slightly less faded, was a delicately stitched leaf with ‘Bruce Thomas Wayne’ and a date of birth on it. What surprised Dick more was that a centimetre to the left of Bruce was a name dated three years prior and with a death date not even half a year later, ‘Thomas Patrick Wayne’.</p><p>“Shouldn’t Bruce be showing me this?” Dick asked, voice hushed as he started tracing the names and dates with his eyes up and further back. Alfred let out a soft sigh and inspected the tapestry’s edge with the lightest of touches, making sure any signs of wear and tear were just because of age.</p><p>“There are many duties which, even so many years later, are still too heavy for Master Bruce to bear,” he explained. “I would rather it be done unconventionally than not at all, Master Richard.”</p><p>Dick swallowed thickly and made sure to nod; he had to tear his eyes away from the only name on the old thing besides Bruce’s that <em>didn’t </em>have a death date listed alongside. Alfred left the curtain open for the moment and turned to a series of small paintings directly to its right.</p><p>They were very old, and much smaller than the portraits further down the wall. There were five total, and from the style of dress Dick hazarded a guess that they were painted somewhere in Europe before the advent of <em>slacks</em>, if the fancy cravats and hats and stockings were any indication. One was an actual <em>wood-cutting, </em>which Alfred pointed out firstly.</p><p>“This here is the furthest back the Waynes have been traced reliably. It dates to the mid-1400s and depicts one Harold of Waynemoor, the elder brother of Lorin of Waynemoor of whom Master Bruce is a direct descendent.” The four paintings that surrounded it were of two children and their parents, a family of five, another of three and then one of a couple on their own. “The Waynes in Europe were a small textile-making lineage until the early 1700s, which is the next time period we have definitive record of. Gertrude and Hadrian Wayne had their two children, Isaac and Caleb, in this painting here. Isaac married a young woman named Helen and they had three children; Anthony, Darius and Thomas, whilst Caleb’s wife Marguerite died in childbirth. He raised his twins, Horatio and Silas, on his own. This here is Darius and his wife, Mary Lewin. Her family was a line of shop-keepers, which is where they received the financial leg up that would lead to Wayne Enterprises a few generations later. She is also the reason we celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah... although Mrs Wayne’s family, the Kanes, also observe.”</p><p>Dick looked back at the family tree and found the line that led down to a separate branch of the Waynes, all of whom had died in one particular decade; he felt a little ill but tried to pay attention.</p><p>It took nearly an hour to go through the gallery, and that didn’t even include the time spent on the heirlooms and the few generations recorded of each of the families who had married into the Waynes. By the end Dick’s eyes were scratchy and he felt like all he wanted to do was go upstairs and bury under the blankets on his bed and forget everything for awhile. There were so many dead people in this room it was suffocating.</p><p>But instead, Dick kept following Alfred and made sure to listen carefully. He didn’t know yet if he really wanted to be Bruce’s <em>son</em> –not only because of his parents’ memory, but also because Bruce had made it clear to him that it was entirely his choice how close he wanted them to be –but this stuff was <em>important.</em> The entirety of a big, sprawling family that dated back 600 years and all of it was in this room, in the heads of only three people on Earth. Even if he never thought of Bruce as his Dad, he wanted to know about his –their –family.</p><p>“There is only one last thing for today, Master Richard,” Alfred said, something in his voice gone wistful. “Do wait here a moment.”</p><p>‘Here’ was an empty section of the wall just next to where a painting of Thomas, Martha and Bruce was hung, and after everything he’d absorbed in the last few hours it was hard for Dick to even look at it. Was this what Bruce felt like all the time, the weight of a hundred dead family members on his shoulders, not just the two most well known?</p><p>Alfred came back with the package unwrapped, but facing so Dick couldn’t see it, and it was indeed the back of something framed to hang on the wall. The old butler looked almost apologetic as he carefully held it in his hands between them.</p><p>“This may have been an overstep, Master Richard, but one I hope you will forgive me for,” Dick nodded jerkily for Alfred to go on, but he still didn’t turn the frame around so Dick could <em>see.</em> “This Manor has been empty ever since Mr and Mrs Wayne died, despite still having two occupants. It was not built to house only one man, nor was it ever meant to be a mausoleum, only ghosts to remember each other by. It was meant to be a home to a family – to <em>this</em> family. Both Master Bruce and I, despite the circumstances, are incredibly glad to have you here, Master Richard. I myself hope that whatever happens in the future, you remember that you always have a home here waiting for you, and Master Bruce, even though it is difficult for him to show it, hopes the same.”</p><p>Dick sniffed and tried to swallow down the lump in his throat; every day spent in the Manor, something new threw him off, knocked him off his guard and back into the little kid who had only ever known the love of his parents and the impermanence of life on the road. The kid whose family legacy boiled down to the trapeze in his hands and the Romani on his tongue, and who was all that was left of John and Mary Grayson in the world.</p><p>The painting Alfred showed him made Dick stop breathing for a few seconds. It was a replica of a photograph he had shown to Bruce not long after he came to live here, so his guardian could arrange a frame for it in order to let it safely stand on the side table in Dick’s bedroom.</p><p>It was a family photo –Dick, freshly seven years old and in his first Flying Graysons uniform, with his father and mother standing behind him dressed just the same, smiling with love and pride plain as day upon their faces. Even the background had been recreated, the flags on the bigtop and the draped curtains down the sides just slightly muted so it was Dick’s family who stood out best. There was even a small plaque on the bottom that listed their names; ‘John Henry Grayson’, ‘Mary Ira Grayson nee Loyd’, and ‘Richard John Grayson’.</p><p>“But –But this hall is for Bruce’s family,” Dick hated the way his skin felt pinched as he stared, and he missed whatever expression accompanied the short, stuttered gasp of breath Alfred drew in just then.</p><p>“My dear boy,” Alfred placed a hand on Dick’s shoulder, and without his permission the tears that had been itching at his eyes started to drip down his cheeks. “You already are Master Bruce’s family. Be sure of that.”</p><p>Dick hung the painting up high on the wall, as if it were one of the posters Haly’s used to plaster on sign boards and street light poles in the days before they fully set up and began their show. Alfred closed the curtains that protected the family tapestry from light damage, but Dick would find out later that it had been sent away and altered not even a month after this –to include a small, stitched leaf underneath Bruce’s that read ‘Richard John Grayson-Wayne’ along with his date of birth, connected by a silver edged green line.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Jason Peter Todd-Wayne</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You could probably guess that going from Crime Alley to Wayne Manor was jarring.</p><p>The first few weeks, Jason was constantly on alert waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even knowing that Batman and Bruce were one and the same, even with Alfred doing his best to ease him into things, even with Dick occasionally dropping in on the weekends –he couldn’t shake off his instinctual distrust. No one noticed until they were out, but the Alley, <em>Gotham, </em>it got into your bones no matter how young you were, and there was a reason that up and leaving was considered extreme no matter how bad the city chewed you up. Even consciously trying to overcome it, Jason knew he was failing spectacularly.</p><p>“Ah, Master Jason, just who I’ve been looking for.”</p><p>Now, two months in, Jason had a hard time moving away from the well-trod areas of the Manor. His room, the library and the dining room were where he felt most comfortable –although ever since he had found the secret door in the spare room next to his own that led to the old nursery and children’s staircase, he had begun to hole up in there if he ever needed time to himself. Bruce was trying to be a good parent, he could see that, but there was only so much Jason could handle of nice things and kind words.</p><p>When Alfred stepped further into the library, Jason had the brief, strong urge to hide the book he was reading –Willis Todd would’ve cuffed him for even touching something like Little Women. But he forced himself to simply mark his place and set the book on the side table, reasoning that if Alfred had put it in the stack of suggested reading, he damn well wouldn’t mind when he actually <em>did </em>read it.</p><p>“You, uh, you need some help, Alfie?” Jason guessed, and only then did he notice Dick hovering in the doorway. His guard shot back up without his permission. Something was going on.</p><p>“In a certain sense. There are a few things I’d like to speak with you about, and Master Richard wanted to assist me,” Alfred turned slightly to give Dick a rather pointed look and the older boy shot back a sheepish grin before he ventured into the library proper.</p><p>“Heya, kid,” Dick raised a hand, and since it was only a little awkward Jason greeted him back. Alfred asked them to follow him, and Jason put his caution on the back burner for now, making the decision to wait and see what the old man had in store.</p><p>Dick and Bruce’s relationship was... strange, to Jason. Something about the way Alfred wore an open expression of relief at even the tersest of goodbyes between the pair at the end of Dick’s visits told Jason that things could be a lot worse than strained dinnertime conversation and Dick living in Blüdhaven. Jason and Dick had spoken a time or two on patrol after Dick entrusted him with Robin, and it had been nice to have someone to commiserate with over Bruce’s fumbling attempts to emotionally connect and Batman’s often overbearing protectiveness. But even as bitter as Dick could get, he kept coming back for Sunday dinner like clockwork, even if during one of his and Bruce’s shouting matches he claimed he’d never step foot in the Manor again, even if Nightwing occasionally had to bully his way onto a case with Batman and ended the case even more frustrated.</p><p>(Jason was sure that Dick’s continued presence was in great part owed to the hushed conversations Alfred had with him in the kitchen while they did the dishes after dinner.)</p><p>“So what’s goin’ on?” Jason asked as he and Dick trailed behind Alfred through the halls, apparently headed towards the guest room opposite the stairs from Jason’s. “You guys’re actin’ weird.”</p><p>Dick snorted, “Nothing gets past you, huh?” They waited in the hall while Alfred did whatever he was doing, and Dick swung his arms up to fold them behind his head casually. “It’s, uh, family stuff. Since the paperwork’s all finished, you’re officially Bruce’s kid now... and my brother. That means there’s stuff you’ve got to learn about.”</p><p>An unpleasant feeling began churning in Jason’s gut. “That’s all I’ve <em>been doin’.</em>” The words sounded mulish even to him, like a sentence Amy March would whine to her mother when she was in a pout, but he felt it was justified.</p><p>He hadn’t grown up here like Bruce, and was a good bit older than Dick when he first came here, and that made it infinitely more difficult to adjust. It wasn’t easy to let go of his long ingrained habits; the cigarette when he was stressed, the food stash in his closet or the go-bag under his bed, the way he obsessively checked the locks on the doors to his rooms. Not to mention having to attend Gotham Academy, and being recognized when he left the Manor, or when he and Bruce stopped at WE on Fridays and the people from the Martha Wayne Foundation asked him his opinion like it actually <em>mattered.</em></p><p>It was as if everything he had learnt in his first twelve years alive wasn’t actually worth squat.</p><p>“I know. It’s a lot, yeah?” Dick sounded sympathetic, and Jason eased somewhat –he might not know about all of it, but Dick had gone through a bunch of the same experiences. He sometimes forgot because Dick was older. “But trust me, this stuff is <em>actually </em>important. Hell, if you flunked out of school and told every rich guy <em>Brucie</em> has to schmooze with to shove it and stopped helping Alfred with dinner, I’d take it so long as you paid attention to this.”</p><p>Jason’s eyebrows shot up of their own accord –he didn’t expect to hear something like <em>that </em>today.</p><p>“While I agree with the sentiment, Master Richard, perhaps let’s not include ‘contributing to the delinquency of a minor’ on the long list of crimes this family has committed, hm?” Alfred said, suddenly behind them again. He was carrying a wrapped package that was shaped like a big mirror or a painting in a frame. “Now come along, we only have so much time before I need to start supper.”</p><p>Dick winked at Jason and they set off again, taking the grand stairs down into the great hall and then over to the gallery, where Alfred placed the package down next to one of the doors that connected to the drawing room. It had taken Jason a lot longer than he cared to admit to remember what all the Manor rooms were called in fancy speak –he didn’t exactly go exploring.</p><p>At first that had just been because he didn’t want to give Bruce any extra ammo if he was going to change his mind, but as the time went by it was just that, well, the Manor wasn’t exactly <em>welcoming. </em>Dick had mentioned once that it actually used to be much worse, whole rooms shut up and dormant, an entire wing of the place dark and unused, places only Alfred ever stepped foot in to clean until Dick started poking his nose everywhere with Barbara on his heels. Jason wasn’t sure when he’d be able to muster up the same nerve.</p><p>The gallery at least he had walked by before, but he never really looked at any of the paintings or the heirlooms scattered around it. Bruce never did, or not that Jason noticed, so in unspoken solidarity he also refrained. But he dutifully kept up with Dick and Alfred, this time over to a part of the wall partially covered by curtains.</p><p>The tapestry underneath was old and sprawling and probably the single most valuable thing Jason would ever see in his life. Not just because of how obviously expensive it was –the hand embroidered edges covered in thistle flowers and leaves and what looked like actual silver thread –but also because it was a <em>family record. </em>It figured that the Waynes would keep something like this. All Jason knew about from his own parents was that Willis had never spoken of his family and his maternal grandparents had been named Malena and Samuel Johnson.</p><p>This, though, this was actual <em>history </em>he was looking at; hundreds of years of it probably. No wonder Dick said all that stuff. Jason couldn’t help but glance at the names closest to Bruce’s age-wise, his adopted father’s cousins Van, Emelyn and Jane, and how they had children of their own, a Jeremy and a Vincent Jr. Then he couldn’t bear to look anymore when he realized that nearly every last one of them had died.</p><p>“You’re part of the family now, Jay,” Dick said, and the suddenness of his voice startled Jason a little. His eyes flashed again to the family tree, where there was a small leaf connected to Bruce’s bearing Dick’s name and birth date. “Apparently Bruce should really be the one doing this, but... you know how he is about stuff like this. So Alfred was the one who told me, and I want to tell you.”</p><p>Jason swallowed with difficulty and finally looked up at his... brother. “Okay,” he nodded, and Dick began.</p><p>Jason had a hard time following the separate delineations of the different branches of the Waynes without visual help, so once they moved past the oldest paintings he would periodically go back to the tapestry so Jason could have a clear look at how all of it matched up. Alfred helped Dick find his stride with the first few names, but by the time they moved on to the European branch of the family he was explaining it all as if he’d done it dozens of times before.</p><p>“So, Darius and Mary ended up having two kids; Charles and Herkimer,” Dick explained as he pointed at the first big family portrait in the gallery. An old man and his equally elderly wife with two grown sons, one of which was already married and whose wife was pregnant, while the younger brother stood stiffly in a military uniform. “Charles and Cynthia, the woman there, they ended up moving states-side once both their kids were born and landed in 1803, I’ll get back to them. But Herkimer stayed in Europe –he ended up going to Germany and kept up the textiles side of the family business.”</p><p>Alfred stepped up next to them and pointed out two black and white photographs set just a little apart from the rest, above a tiny shelf on the wall that had a journal resting on it. The photos were both damaged around the edges, and while the first was of a man in early 1900s style clothing (top hat and all), the second was a family; a man, a woman and a child who couldn’t be more than ten.</p><p>“Most of the records after Herkimer went to Germany were lost,” Alfred’s mouth twitched down sadly. “These were all we could salvage, Mr Wayne searched for years before a museum in Berlin contacted him. While the original is still in Berlin, we had a recreation made of the journal if you should ever like to look through it.”</p><p>“That’s Winslow and Margot Wayne, here, and their son Ismael,” Dick took over once more and put his hand on Jason’s shoulder. “We’re pretty sure this man in the other photo is Winslow’s younger brother Caleb Isaiah, but all we really know outside of the journal from Margot is where and when they died. After 1944 the European side was just gone.”</p><p>The photos had the dates thinly scribbled onto the top corners; Caleb’s was from 1935 while Winslow’s family was from 1931. Caleb looked middle-aged but not as stiff and formal as the paintings Jason had seen up to now, and though the family photo made them all look solemn, Winslow had his arms wrapped around his wife and son and they were leaning into him.</p><p>Jason listened carefully as Dick kept going, sometimes with help from Alfred. None of the rest of the stories were better, really, or at least they all seemed to end in death, death, death; Jason made a note to ask if any of this was written down. With so few people who knew all this stuff it would be completely lost if something <em>really bad</em> happened; if it wasn’t, maybe he could make it a bit of a personal project. Maybe Bruce could read it and feel a little better about the family he’d lost.</p><p>Dick ended his tour at the big painting of he and his parents at Haly’s Circus, and as he told Jason about his grandparents on either side and the aunt he had never met, Jason realized what the package Alfred had brought with him was. He broke out in a cold sweat at the thought of including <em>Willis Todd</em> in this hall next to all the members of Bruce’s family who came before him, a painting that would have to be <em>maintained </em>and would stare at him for years and years-</p><p>“Master Jason, we tried to pick something that took your wishes into account, but if we were mistaken, it can always be redone,” Alfred was beside him again, this time with the painting unwrapped and turned away from him, and even with his stomach tied in knots Jason couldn’t stop himself from nodding. “I have never seen this Manor full in the way it is supposed to be. I may never see it if tragedy keeps following us. But I am happy to say I have again seen it inhabited by a family, that even though you have your difficulties, you, Master Richard and Master Bruce are a <em>family. </em> It is all I have ever wanted, Master Jason.”</p><p>Jason bit his lip as Dick, no longer awkward, not hesitating, nodded in agreement. “I’ve been a shit big brother, Jay, I might still be one sometimes. But I’m glad you’re here, and so’s Bruce, an’ we always will be. There’s a lot of baggage even without Batman and Robin, but I think it’s worth it,” Dick looked unsure for a split second, before he stepped closer and tugged Jason into a hug, and Jason had stopped crying ages ago out of self preservation but his eyes itched something fierce all the same.</p><p>When he saw the painting all he felt was relief. It was the same one Bruce had enlarged and framed for him so he could hang it on the wall of his bedroom –a photo of him and his mother from a good day a few years ago that he had put in a plastic baggie and kept squirreled away no matter how hard living on the streets got. She hadn’t been hooked on the hard stuff yet and Willis was gone on ‘business’ for two weeks. At the library they spent all afternoon in a big armchair in the back corner, and Miss Kennedy who was Catherine’s friend from high school had taken their picture and developed it for them; Jason was curled next to his mother, a battered copy of Robin Hood held in his lap, and his mother’s arms were wrapped around him in the same way Winslow Wayne had held his family close.</p><p>“It’s perfect,” he breathed, every ounce of worry over it gone, leaving him with Dick and Alfred and feeling like he did when he was Robin, like he had magic. He wished Bruce was here to see the little plaque that read ‘Catherine Elizabeth Todd nee Johnson’ and ‘Jason Peter Todd’. “I –I really get to hang it up?”</p><p>“You do,” Dick confirmed.</p><p>“We would like nothing more,” Alfred said, and he stooped down to get the little bag of supplies that Jason hadn’t even noticed at his feet.</p><p>Jason hung the painting at eye level, so he could come and look at it whenever he wanted, so he wouldn’t be able to forget that there had once been good times before everything fell apart. He found Dick’s name on the tapestry again before Alfred closed the curtains and allowed himself to feel quietly pleased that his name would be added as well, and that maybe someday he’d be able to tell someone else all of this. Maybe someday there would be more people in the Manor than just the four of them, and Jason had never let himself think about the possibility of having kids before, but-</p><p>-maybe it could happen. He had time to figure it out, now.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>We’re playing fast and loose with canon, kids! Tim’s timeline can be confusing,,,</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It went without saying that when Tim first showed up on the steps of Wayne Manor, he had been an unwanted presence. Batman was lost in grief and Alfred was torn between Bruce and Dick, and Tim had been an interloper, a wedge driven into their precarious situation, an <em>outsider.</em> Anyone with even an ounce of Gotham in their blood knew how the city took to outsiders.</p><p>That had changed, slowly. As Robin, Tim saw how Batman clawed himself back from the edge he’d been perched on, saw Barbara come to terms with losing Batgirl, saw Dick and Bruce mend their relationship enough that weekends saw Nightwing back at the Manor again. There was a reprieve when Tim met Spoiler on patrol –and despite their rocky start, having a <em>friend </em>in the mask turned out to be exactly what he needed. He started thinking about Dick’s old team, the Titans, started wondering if Batman could handle it if he stretched his own wings a little, so to speak.</p><p>Tim’s parents went missing, then. By the time anyone figured out where they were, his mother was dead and his father unresponsive. This time Bruce asked him to stay in the Manor, and Tim liked to think that meant he <em>was</em> wanted, now. That it just went without saying.</p><p>Dick had moved into one of the larger suites before he ran off to Blüdhaven, and apparently it was no longer acceptable by Alfred’s standards for Tim to stay in a guest room, so he moved into Dick’s old room. Things settled again; Stephanie hung out after school and Tim visited his father a couple times a week, and Robin was finally introduced to some of the other young heroes on the scene these days. Starting Young Justice with Superboy and Impulse and Wonder Girl was one of the best decisions he ever made, and having <em>more </em>friends was even better now that Batman was stable and healing and Tim could step out of his shadow without worrying.</p><p>Tim doesn’t like to think about the year that led up to his formal adoption. Jack recovering only to find out about Batman and Robin and then forcing him to retire had been bad enough, but then Jack was dead, and Dana was so overcome in her grief that she could barely remember him. Well, it wasn’t a surprise that Bruce had adopted him, not after all that.</p><p>Or at least, it wasn’t a surprise to Tim, who had been with Batman through all but the very worst months of his grief and <em>seen </em>how hard he worked to bring himself back from that. Jason’s death had affected him more than any other crisis, injury or broken bond in his life –except perhaps the deaths of his parents, and maybe not even that. Tim didn’t like to speculate.</p><p>Selfishly, it soothed something in Tim’s chest. The fact that Bruce <em>actually adopted him </em>after all he’d gone through with Jason... it meant something. He was Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne. It didn’t go without saying that he was wanted in the Manor, in the family, even as small and insular as it was. Adoption was basically shouting ‘I want you here’ at the top of your lungs, Bruce wouldn’t just <em>offer</em> <em>that</em> because he felt obligation or pity at Tim’s circumstances. To be allowed to take his name, it meant more than any words Bruce could ever say to him.</p><p>But Tim was aware there were aspects to being adopted into a family like the Waynes that he should be aware of –and that no one had approached him about yet. The Manor was old hat by now, almost all the rooms opened up and even used on occasion when everyone was visiting, no longer any ghosts in the corners like Dick said was the norm back when Bruce first took him in. Wayne Enterprises he was also familiar with through his conversations with Bruce on the subject; Tim, both by assumption and by his own aspirations, would probably be the one to take over most of Bruce’s duties at the company in the future.</p><p>Tim knew all of the high society talk and how to pick a suit for a gala, could leave the cooking to Alfred but keep his room in order, and was even able to rattle off a bit of the history about the heirlooms Bruce kept scattered around. Every Gotham kid absorbed stuff about the Waynes just by living here, like which buildings or streets were named after a Wayne, certain places that were significant to the family, and of course everything the company did to help the city. But Tim didn’t know about the Waynes as a family beyond what the general public knew, and he didn’t want to push.</p><p>If Tim wanted to know, he had to find out for himself; being wanted didn’t mean he was entitled to anything. So he started digging.</p><p>Tim went through the upstairs library and ducked into Bruce’s sitting room and the study while he had the excuse of grabbing another book to avoid anyone questioning his presence. When that didn’t glean any results he moved onto the other rooms, although he didn’t dare disturb Thomas and Martha Wayne’s quarters –he would go to Bruce about this before he stepped foot in there.</p><p>He tried the nursery and then the downstairs library, then the reception room and the school room. When even the drawing room and the study and the den yielded nothing, he was about ready to just give in and ask Alfred or Dick for some help, when he paused.</p><p>He hadn’t checked Jason’s room.</p><p>Jason’s rooms were on the other side of the wall from Tim’s, and while they didn’t share a sitting room they did share a bathroom. Until now, Tim had almost tried to block it out of his mind; something about living next to where <em>his </em>Robin used to live was just too much for him to dwell on, too sad to let himself think about. But Jason had once been a voracious reader, and as the most recent person to be inducted into the Wayne family if there was ever going to be a written record of their history, it made sense for Jason to have had it.</p><p>So one evening, a school night when Batman was out on patrol and Alfred and Dick were holed up in the kitchen doing their usual washing dishes/heart to heart chat thing, Tim padded across the marble floor of the bathroom and let himself into Jason’s sitting room.</p><p>He turned on a lamp to help him see and shivered a little. It looked just like the other unused rooms in the Manor, but Tim suddenly understood what Dick was trying to convey when he said ‘ghosts in the corners’ and ‘a cloying sense of grief’. There was nothing especially big that set it apart, but just standing inside was disquieting, like someone was watching him and judging him for trespassing.</p><p>There were a lot more books in here than the other sitting rooms he had checked, so Tim got to work. He only had so much time before Dick and Alfred called him down for tea.</p><p><em>Still nothing. </em>Tim turned the lamp off so no one in the hallway could tell he was in here, and though he hesitated... well, in for a penny in for a pound, as the phrase went.</p><p>If the sitting room was bad, Jason’s bedroom made him shudder and lose whatever grace the Robin training fostered in him. He knew Alfred came in once a month to clean, but in all honesty that made it worse –beyond the faded colours in some of the unmoved items near the window it was as if Jason could walk in at any moment and flop down to read on the bed. It was eerie.</p><p>Tim swallowed thickly and used his phone flashlight to check the bookshelves, wanting nothing more than to leave.</p><p>He finally found it on the shelf of Jason’s nightstand beside a small stack of books the other boy had probably meant to start reading next. It was a slim silver book, unassuming except for the spine which read ‘The Gotham Waynes’ in thick gothic letters. If there was a single book in the whole Manor that would give Tim what he was looking for, this would be it. Tim didn’t let himself second guess; he carefully slid it loose and left Jason’s quarters in a hurry, and barely took a breath until he was shut up in his own room again.</p><p>The blank cover of the book was almost damning, but Tim cracked it open anyway. On the inside cover was a family tree, carefully drawn in with names and birth and death dates, and when Tim looked down to Bruce’s name and saw two lines connecting it to Dick and Jason, he had to close it again to stop himself from crying. The words on the spine of the book stared up at him, and now that he was looking in better light he could see they had been painted with some sort of film on top to stop it chipping. It was by no means an old book.</p><p>Tim had been hoping for a family record book, and he found one. But he hadn’t expected that <em>Jason </em>had been the one to write it.</p><p>It was okay. Tim hadn’t been welcome when he first came to the Manor, and he had forced himself in because Batman had needed him. He didn’t have to be told he wasn’t welcome to this book, but he was going to read it anyway. If he wanted to know something, he had to find out for himself. If there was no one to pass it on, he had to take it for his own.</p><p>The illustration on the inside cover was copied from something, probably the original family tree that Tim guessed was framed on a wall somewhere in the Manor. Tim hadn’t yet seen one, but granted he didn’t often pay attention to the decor of the place outside of the bits that drew his eye for his photography. Up from Bruce’s name, it surprised Tim to see how crowded the section around Thomas Wayne was –he never knew the man had so many older siblings. Even a cousin, one Bruce Nathan Wayne, who it was pretty obvious Bruce had been named after –the man had died only a few years before Bruce was born.</p><p>Eventually Tim worked himself up to opening the actual book.</p><p><em>‘Enclosed is the recorded history of the Wayne Family, taken down by Jason Peter Todd-Wayne...’ </em> the writing was neatly done, if a little unpractised; far better however than Tim usually saw from other teenagers. <em>‘Sorted chronologically by lineage, sections focusing on each family to marry in follow the corresponding spouse, photos attached if applicable. Section on heirlooms begins on page xx. Index begins on page xxx.’</em></p><p>Tim had followed Batman and Robin around for years, but he hadn’t known them. Only once he was begrudgingly accepted as Robin himself, only once Bruce had opened the Manor to him afterwards, did he really start to see them for who they actually were. By then, it was too late for Tim to ever really know Jason, not in a tangible way, at least.</p><p>But <em>this</em>, flipping through the Wayne family record book that Jason had so carefully and lovingly put together, Tim felt like he was actually getting a glimpse of who his... older brother had been.</p><p>And he was a <em>nerd</em>, just like Barbara said.</p><p><em>‘Charles and Cynthia landed in Halifax originally in 1803, with Solomon and Joshua both under five years old,’ </em>Jason wrote, with a footnote that explained their immigration records (he also included a printout of those) had been smudged slightly so there were two recorded birth years for Joshua, <em>‘They moved into New Jersey within a year, first to Trenton because it was briefly the capital of the entire country, and then finally to Gotham in 1805. Charles Wayne went on to take advantage of the growing Port of Gotham and set up Wayne Shipping Co, which was the precursor to Wayne Enterprises.’</em></p><p>He was diligent with the dates and indexing, and every entry even had a little place at the end that cross-referenced if they were named after someone or if the name itself had any other significance. There were thistles painstakingly stamped in ink onto the corners, evidence of eraser marks on the early entries showing how many times Jason had redone them before he found what was probably an old wax seal, and Tim recognized some of the photos as snap shots of the paintings downstairs in the gallery.</p><p><em>‘Wayne Shipping Co proved successful, and as Gotham Town developed into Gotham City, Charles used his growing fortune to contribute to its early infrastructure. His name is associated with the first hospital, Mercy Hospital and Medical Center, the first post office, and the first dry dock, part of the old Wayne Shipyard in the West End.’ </em>Here, Jason had dedicated a page to said shipyard, all of the images in black and white because the area had been shut down and turned into the First Gotham Pier not long after the turn of the century. Tim’s elementary school had gone to the museum that was nearby on a field trip when he was eight. <em>‘Due to the Gotham Fire of 1825, most of the paper records of this time period were lost. In 1830, however, Solomon Wayne was sworn in as a District Court Judge. Soon after, Joshua Wayne’s name was listed as the owner of Wayne Shipping Co.’</em></p><p>
  <em>‘In 1835, Solomon married Dorothea Chapman, the sister of the 1825-1832 Mayor of Gotham, Phillip Chapman (see page xx for listing; Chapman). Their only son, Alan Wayne, would be born five years later. It was Alan who would eventually turn Wayne Shipping Co into Wayne Enterprises in 1875, just before partnering with Theodore Cobblepot and Edward Elliot to construct the Gates of Gotham trio of bridges. This is the event which cemented Alan Wayne as one of the founders of Gotham City. His wife, Catherine Van Derm (see page xx for listing; Van Derm)...’</em>
</p><p>And on it went, meticulous and thought out to the letter. Tim suspected that there were probably more than a few early drafts of this book he would never be able to see –Jason seemed like Bruce in that while he <em>could</em> play off the cuff, he preferred to plan everything out so there wouldn’t be any unexpected problems later on. Tim liked to work that way as well, so he would know.</p><p>Just after Bruce’s entry and before Dick’s, Jason had a page devoted to Alfred, and that hit Tim harder than the entire rest of the book put together. He wondered if Jason had told Alfred why he was asking the questions he needed in order to put together the entry, or if he had feigned simple curiosity. Maybe Jason had done what Tim would have, and recorded any piece of information dropped over the course of months and years and then eventually stitched it all together to form a cohesive whole.</p><p>He wondered if Jason would have liked him, if they could have met when he was alive. Realistically, Tim knew things would be drastically different had the older boy not died –Tim certainly never would’ve revealed that he knew Batman and Robin’s identities. Tim never would’ve been brought into the Wayne family at all, if Jason were still alive. Maybe he shouldn’t dwell on what-ifs.</p><p>The end of the book was hard to get through, because Jason had left space for future entries, hopeful that one day there would be more people around to fill them. By now though, Tim was so invested that he felt he <em>had </em>to read to the end; he carefully flipped through the blank pages in case there was anything he might miss on a faster read, and eventually he came up to the index. And then, he turned to look at the back cover.</p><p>//</p><p>Tim put the book back in Jason’s bedroom a week later, just in time for Alfred to approach him and ask for him to pick out a photo that he might want displayed in the gallery. The painting of Janet and Jack Drake arrived two weeks after that, and when Alfred knocked on his bedroom door, Tim never once mentioned the book he had found in Jason’s rooms. He didn’t want to let him know that Tim doubted he would do this for him.</p><p>Alfred took him through the gallery alone; he explained with a tight, sad voice that he couldn’t ask Bruce to do this after so long, and Dick had wanted to come, he really did. But the older boy had only just signed the adoption papers Bruce offered him, and Alfred confided that the whole situation brought back too many memories of doing this for Jason for him to bear.</p><p>Tim knew too well how much death could hang over you, although he wasn’t as torn in two by his parents’ deaths as the Waynes were by Jason’s. He hung up the painting of his parents to the right of the image of Jason and Catherine but closer to the floor. Tim loved them, he did, but thinking about them in any context was too painful, too complicated. He loved them, but he barely knew them; he loved them, but they had hurt him so much over his life that sometimes he didn’t really remember they were his parents at all. It was better not to dwell on it.</p><p>What Tim <em>could </em>let himself dwell on was the message Jason had left in the back cover of the family records book, something that Alfred had, unknowingly, echoed when he told him about all the Waynes memorialized in the hall.</p><p>
  <em>‘Alfred says the Manor is meant to be full, to have a family living here and keeping it alive through the generations. Whoever reads this in the future, I hope you’re still there. I hope more family was brought in, like Bruce did with Dick and then with me even though it hurt him to open up like that. Even with all of the horrible stuff that’s happened to us, I’m sure it’s worth it, to have a family. It has to be.’</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Cassandra Wayne</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Cassandra had not come to Gotham to find a family. She wasn’t entirely sure why she had ended up in Gotham at all –in nine years of homelessness and running from David Cain she had traveled to places much more welcoming and peaceful than Gotham City. But maybe that was why; someone like her, a killer, didn’t deserve to live a quiet, contented life. She deserved to repent for her sins until the day she died, hoping that would be enough.</p><p>Cassandra had met Barbara when she first arrived in Gotham. She had become Batgirl with both Oracle and Batman’s blessing, and had done her best to live up to that expectation. She had tried to do her best. When that telepath had invaded her mind and crippled the one skill she possessed, she had been torn in two over it; on the one hand, she could actually communicate with Barbara, with Batman, and being able to speak and <em>understand</em> helped a lot. But on the other hand, being able to fight was all she was good for. How could she make up for the life she had taken if she couldn’t properly defend herself or <em>help?</em></p><p>There were times in her life she didn’t think about; the first eight years with David Cain, the fight against Shiva, the manipulation by Deathstroke. Up to now, everything in her life just seemed to be one crisis after another, one tragedy or betrayal after another –for a long time, Cassandra accepted what she thought would be her lot in life. Now, things had changed. There were better things to keep in mind, better days now that she lived in Gotham and had been brought into the Batman’s cluster of vigilantes, and Bruce Wayne’s family.</p><p>Living in one place was still strange, even after the trial run at the Clocktower. The Manor was nothing like Barbara’s base, with its computer monitors and practical layout and cold, dark nights up above the rest of Gotham. The Manor was big and old, and Cassandra may not know much about why people choose certain things to fill their homes, but even she could tell that the Manor’s decor wasn’t exactly in line with Bruce’s tastes. When Cassandra got night terrors, Bruce let her be near him in his sitting room or in the armchair in his bedroom, and in those personal spaces he tended toward clean lines and muted colours, minimal clutter. The Manor was none of those things.</p><p>Cassandra hadn’t explored all of the Manor, but Alfred had said once that of all her brothers she was the one who seemed the most comfortable wandering. There were places Dick said not to go, when she first arrived, and she had respected that; Bruce’s parents’ rooms, the gallery, the old servants’ wing. But as far as she was concerned there was no reason to refrain from anywhere else, especially if this was now to be her home. Especially now that she was expected to be a <em>daughter</em>, and not just David Cain’s convenient offspring.</p><p>So she explored when she had nothing else to do and tried to read the choices in decor like she could read a body’s choices. There was a guest wing that hadn’t been used in years. There was the upstairs library, quiet and with windows that let in the light perfectly, and yet no one ever mentioned it without sadness overwhelming them. There was the kitchen, which Alfred allowed them into for breakfast but expressly forbade dining in the rest of the day. There were gardens that Tim sometimes helped the groundskeepers maintain if he was benched.</p><p>She liked the guest rooms with a shared sitting room, implying heavily that visitors should mingle away from the family if they had spare time. She liked that Bruce used his private study for work and the downstairs study as a computer room and the Batcave for his <em>night </em>work. She liked that the den was always open and the more formal drawing room and main dining room hadn’t been used for their intended purposes in ages –because that meant that she could avoid Bruce hosting any parties in their home for awhile longer.</p><p>She even liked the downstairs library, where Alfred would help her with her reading practice, patient no matter how difficult it was for her, and when it got to be too much she could fall back on the ASL lessons the entire family was learning alongside her. She liked everything.</p><p>The part of this new life of hers that she liked the least was the Batcave. While she could pass through or train there without a problem, the cavernous space was too closely linked with being Black Bat and everything she had to deal with over her career as Batgirl –if she was going to have a new life with the Waynes, she wanted to keep these two aspects of it from mixing in her mind.</p><p>Like her new family, she started patrol in the cave most of the time. Unlike the rest, she did not dwell in the cave for any longer than she needed to. This was how she knew that Tim had been waiting for her to walk down from the study, specifically, and not only because his body language read trepidation and excitement and confliction all at once.</p><p>YOU-AND-I TALK NOW? He asked without hesitation, if clumsily –out of the family, Tim was having the hardest time picking up the language while she and Bruce had the easiest. IMPORTANT. NOW-NOT, WAIT CAN. <em>(Can we talk right now? It’s important, but I can wait.)</em></p><p>Cassandra smiled at the attempt and signed back, YES, WE TALK. BAT-WORK NONE TONIGHT? <em>(We can talk. We won’t be patrolling tonight?)</em></p><p>“Ah, probably not,” Tim said, while signing MAYBE. “C’mon, we’ve gotta go upstairs again. You don’t have any cases you need to forward to Oracle?”</p><p>“No, no cases,” Cassandra fell into step with Tim, and they took the hall behind the grand staircase to get to the kitchen, where Alfred was putting the remnants of dinner away in the fridge. Cassandra couldn’t help but catalogue the portions she could see and add it to her mental tally –so long without a reliable food source wasn’t an easy habit to break. “What will we talk about?”</p><p>“Prompt as always, Master Tim. Miss Cassandra, we’ll be discussing a few family matters today. It’s something of a tradition in this house,” Alfred washed his hands and tidied up the last few dishes left in the drying rack. He read as calm and fond, as usual, but right now he also had anticipation and joy bubbling up into view as he moved around the space. “Master Richard sends his luck and his regrets that he couldn’t be here.”</p><p>Dick had been trying to be a better big brother now that she was really a part of the family, but Cassandra understood there were still things the older man was hesitant about. Alongside his obvious love, he often projected anxiety and regret whenever he spoke about Tim or Jason and she couldn’t ever bring herself to mention it, not even to Barbara. Tim caught her eye when Alfred stooped to put away the dish soap and signed, D-K AS B, REMINISCE FAMILY CAUSE SAD THOSE-TWO. <em>(Dick is like Bruce, thinking about the family makes them sad.)</em></p><p>UNDERSTAND.</p><p>Alfred and Tim were practically buzzing with unsaid emotions as they all trooped from the kitchen to the gallery, where the lamps around the edges had already been clicked on in preparation for whatever this was. Cassandra had noticed that compared to before when she was only tangentially connected to the Waynes, these days rooms in the Manor were much better lit and more consistently as well. She suspected it had something to do with the fact she relied on visual cues where most of the other Bats were hearing oriented, and they wanted to accommodate her.</p><p>“So, Cass, you’re a part of the family now,” B-R-U-C-E ADOPT YOU, C-A-S-S-A-N-D-R-A W-A-Y-N-E BECOME. Tim began, nervous and worried but in the sense that he probably wanted to get this right. “That means there’s a lot of family stuff you’ve got to learn. There’s so few Waynes left, no one’s going to know anything about the history if we forget, so it’s a big job. There’s a lot here.” OUR FAMILY LARGE BEFORE, BECAME SMALL. NEW SIBLINGS, LEARN HISTORY MUST-NEED. IMPORTANT.</p><p>IMPORTANT. Cassandra nodded decisively and glanced around the gallery –at least there didn’t seem to be much she would have to read. Tim and Alfred would probably talk her though it.</p><p>“I know it’s a little strange since I’m technically your younger brother, now, but...” Tim trailed off and his hands fumbled a little before elaborating, A-L TELL D-K, THOSE-TWO TELL J, TELL-ME FINISH. B HERE-NOT BECAUSE SAD-SAD-SAD.  A-L WE-TWO TELL YOU WILL. <em>(Alfred told Dick, they both told Jason, and I’ve already been told. Bruce isn’t here because he gets too sad. So Alfred and I are going to tell you.)</em></p><p>“Tim, we’re family. Not strange,” Cassandra saw the relief that coursed through her brother and darted in briefly to give him a hug. Hugs were wonderful, especially when Tim squeezed back just as tight. “We can start?”</p><p>Tim brightened up and led her over to the odd curtains on the wall a few feet away –Alfred stayed where he was, his arms crossed over his chest and a smile on his face, happy and sad intertwined in the set of his shoulders. When Tim pulled back the fabric, Cassandra had to really <em>look</em> at the embroidery that covered this portion of the wall. There were flowers around the edges and letters stitched onto the many, many leaves that sprawled down the length of it; Tim noticed her squinting and pointed down near the bottom, where three leaves were connected with silver thread to one by itself. Despite her trouble with letters, Cassandra recognized Bruce’s name right away.</p><p>“It’s a family record, one of the oldest things in the Manor. Your name’ll be added after this,” he indicated the space between Jason’s and his own name. “It’s sorted by birthdate, and see here? The silver lining to the vines connecting us to Bruce means adoption, while marrying in gets a golden line and natural kids don’t get either. Dick wasn’t formally adopted until last year but the colour scheme didn’t really have an option for ‘ward’.”</p><p>Part of Cassandra didn’t quite understand the need for the distinction in the first place, but she supposed people in the past put a lot more emphasis on blood connection than families these days, especially when it came to rich people. She followed the line that connected Bruce to his parents, and then from Martha Wayne to her family, the... Kanes. That would be Kate’s family, then? She had only met the Batwoman once or twice, but Kate and Bruce appeared to get along fairly well.</p><p>“Everyone is dead,” she started to realize, inching her way from the Kanes to the siblings and parents of Bruce’s father. “Why only Bruce and Kate...?”</p><p>“Terrible luck, Miss Cassandra,” Alfred said lowly, hands clasped behind his back now. “Even before Master Bruce took up the name of Batman, the Waynes were dying. Just like the rest of Gotham.”</p><p>Cassandra hadn’t been around long enough to see a Gotham that wasn’t under the patronage of the Wayne Foundation, but of course, living with Barbara, she had learnt about it. The whole city had been hit hard by the collapse of the shipping industry and then the trains mostly being rerouted away, and for over three generations had been run by the mafia. The Wayne Foundation had been started to try and help the poor of the city, just like Batman had been created in large part to protect them –had there not been a Wayne family, Gotham would probably look very, very different.</p><p>“Not anymore,” was what she ended up saying, and Alfred beamed at her.</p><p>Tim took her through the generations of Waynes that had lived in Europe and then arrived in North America, giving a brief aside to talk about how his own families, the Drakes and the Jacksons, had arrived around the same time but didn’t move to Gotham until much, much later. Cassandra had thought sometimes that Barbara might be exaggerating when she mentioned how involved the Waynes were in the building of the city, but as Tim kept going and going it was hard to think that anymore. Even the bridges that Cassandra loved to grapple from on warm summer nights were constructed by Alan Wayne, known even in textbooks as a founder of Gotham City.</p><p>“So Catherine Van Derm was the last of her family when she and Alan married. She had been kidnapped a few years before and the health complications would follow her around, but she still threw herself into the construction of Wayne Manor. She’s the only reason it was finished on time, as she personally supervised the building crews for the two years it took.” Cassandra glanced up at the ceiling and the walls again –seven generations of a family if you counted Dick, Jason, Tim and herself. It was so <em>old. </em>“She died giving birth to their only son, Kenneth. He’d go on to establish Wayne Chemical and help to industrialize Gotham City; we’ve got such a coherent aesthetic in the city because he and Alan just had <em>so many</em> projects they worked on together.”</p><p>“One of my favourite stories,” Alfred cut in, gesturing at a framed photo on the wall. It contained a picture of a man and a woman, both young and dressed in a suit and dress, respectively. The background was some sort of port, maybe an earlier version of the Gotham Port? “Is when Kenneth Wayne was visiting the Gotham Shipyards on an inspection for his father, just after turning twenty-two. He kept a journal which we still have in storage. This would have been in 1890 or so, so the Port was still processing immigration from Europe. Kenneth, on a whim, decided to visit the Port cafeteria for lunch after a long morning, and reportedly bumped into a young lady and spilled soup down his front.”</p><p>Cassandra smiled at the image Alfred was painting, trying to imagine what the man in the photo’s body language would look like after that. Surprise, of course, with maybe some anger fuelled by his tiredness. Disappointment at the loss of his meal.</p><p>“Laura Elizabeth McLoughlin, only just arrived from Ireland, and apparently mortified at the mishap –well, Kenneth didn’t really mention how they went from there to courting, all he could write about was how <em>besotted </em>he was with her.” Alfred drew her attention to the next photo on the wall, what was very obviously a wedding portrait. “They would be married in 1895, and have two sons before 1900.”</p><p>“They would also adopt two kids,” Tim showed her another photograph with a date on a plaque attached... January 1905. All four children weren’t yet teenagers, and though Cassandra had trouble assessing pictures for body language, she suspected they were happy. They weren’t holding themselves as stiffly as other photos from the same era and their faces looked relaxed even without smiling. “Silas, Benjamin, Patrick and Abigail. When Kenneth died in 1907 during an accident at the Pier, Laura took over the company. She would run it, take care of her kids and her aging father-in-law practically by herself. Silas wound up the mayor of Gotham for a term in 1927 and married Elena, the third daughter of Giuseppe Gaspari –he was a mob boss –and they had Bruce Nathan, who moved out west to become a detective. You can probably guess who Bruce is named after.”</p><p>“Detective, really?” Tim laughed at that, and shrugged. “And the others?”</p><p>“Oh, well Benjamin never married, he took over the running of Wayne Chemical. Unfortunately he died in a mob shootout,” Tim winced, and they moved on to new photographs. “And Patrick was Bruce’s grandfather, he took over as owner of Wayne Enterprises in 1921. Abigail never married either, but she was heavily involved in the women’s suffrage movement leading up to 1920.”</p><p>Tim went over how each of them died; it was odd how so few lived to see old age. Maybe it was just the time period skewing the results, but practically the only Wayne who hadn’t died before age 60 in the last century was Alan Wayne, who passed away at 89 from colon cancer. Nearing the end of the tapestry, the end of the history Tim and Alfred were supplying her with, there was a big painting of Bruce, Martha and Thomas. And Tim pointed out then the three newer paintings next to it, and a pit of worry developed in Cassandra’s stomach at the implication.</p><p>But as soon as she looked at Tim and Alfred, she saw none of the uncertainty that would have been clear if they –for some reason –had chosen a photo of David Cain to add to this hall. No, instead there was the same worry, hoping they didn’t make the wrong choice, and the same determination to see this through.</p><p>“Miss Cassandra, I am so glad to have you as a member of this house,” W-A-Y-N-E FAMILY JOIN YOU FINISH, HAPPY I. “I... I almost can’t remember the days when it was only Master Bruce and I. Our lives seem to be getting more complicated, more <em>dangerous</em> I fear, and with Master Jason’s return... in any case, I am sure you can appreciate that it takes a strong heart to be a member of this family.” Alfred projected nothing but love and sadness and hope as he took her hands in his and tilted his head towards a thin package leaning against the wall. “We spoke only with Miss Gordon about this, so I do hope you won’t mind if it isn’t up to snuff.”</p><p>“I wanted to just <em>ask</em>, but some things still have to be a mystery, I suppose,” Tim sniffed in mock-offense and looked over to the wall with his body twisted oddly; grief and fear and love all tied together. When he turned back, he signed along with what he was saying. “We’re not the best family, I doubt we’ll ever be perfect. We’ve all got our problems,” FAMILY HAPPY WITH SAD. PAIN SOMETIMES, ARGUE WILL. “But no matter how bad it gets, no matter what happens, I know it’s got to be worth it,” I LOVE SISTER ALWAYS. BAD OR GOOD HAPPEN, LOVE ALWAYS WILL. “We’re getting older and maybe we won’t always be close, but... Bruce told me we’ll always have a place here, no matter what.” BECOME OLDER WILL, FAMILY KEEP. WORRY-NOT.</p><p>It was terrible signing, according to her instructor. It didn’t match what he was saying so the dissonance distracted her, and the grammar was clumsy and didn’t have the nuance Bruce could convey. Cassandra rarely felt as loved as she did right now.</p><p>The painting they showed her wasn’t one she’d ever seen before, but she loved it instantly. It was from just a few weeks ago, in the hours after the visit to the courthouse where Bruce filed the adoption papers –Barbara and Jim as the witnesses. Cassandra remembered exiting the building and finding Alfred, Dick and Tim waiting for them outside, Tim with his camera at the ready, but any photographs of that day had slipped from her mind in the ensuing afternoon.</p><p>The little plaque at the bottom had their names printed on it, and Cassandra traced them out with care so she was <em>sure</em> she knew what they said. ‘James Worthington Gordon’... ‘Barbara Gordon’... ‘Cassandra Wayne’... and ‘Bruce Thomas Wayne’.</p><p>She had mentioned not thinking of David Cain as her father anymore exactly once, during the discussion with Bruce about the logistics of adopting her so late in her life, without any documentation to be had. Subconsciously she had assumed that, like the three brothers before her, she would simply become Cassandra Cain-Wayne and be content with it. But seeing this painting about to be put up on the wall with her siblings’ families, she understood what Bruce and Alfred had taken from that statement.</p><p>If she didn’t see David Cain as her father and he had treated her so terribly, why on earth would they ask her to keep the man’s surname in her new lease on life?</p><p>“Little brother...” she wiped at her eyes and sniffed, and reached up and pulled both Tim and Alfred in for a hug. “Alfred... love you. Thank you.”</p><p>“You are very welcome, dear girl,” Alfred murmured.</p><p>Tim smiled at her when he pulled away, and underneath the tiredness and the conflict and the sadness that had built and built over the course of the evening, a beam of happiness shone through. “We’re glad you’re here, Cass,” he said, and together they reached down and hefted the painting of her, Bruce, Jim and Barbara up and onto the hook in the wall.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Interlude: Alfred Thaddeus Crane Pennyworth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Cassandra had not spoken a word since the funeral. Alfred wasn’t surprised, and they had made the best of it –their particular dialect of ASL, skewed so it oriented a little more around vigilantism, was still sufficient enough to accommodate. But he had not realized her thoughts were leading her away until he knocked on her door, intending to do nothing besides ask her to consider speaking to Damian, only to find her bed covered by clothes, toiletries and a bag. Everything she would need for light travel.</p><p>Alfred stilled, briefly stunned into forgetting how to form the words. #DO? YOU LEAVE-[go away] THIS HOUSE?  <em>(What are you doing? Are you leaving?)</em></p><p>YES. SORRY. <em>(I am. I’m sorry.) </em>Cassandra hunched in slightly on herself, and it was only then Alfred noticed the sweatshirt she was wearing –it was one of Bruce’s, a terrible yellow thing he received as a gift upon a visit to Gotham University one year. B GONE. TRUE FATHER –Cassandra stopped for a moment and shook her hands out, as if to get the feeling back into numb fingers. STAY HERE CAN’T, SAD-SAD-SAD. RECOVER MUST-NEED, I LEAVE MUST-NEED. <em>(Bruce is gone. My first real father –I can’t stand it, here. I have to recover, I have to leave.)</em></p><p>D-N HOME HERE WILL, NEW SIBLING, UNCERTAIN. PLEASE, YOU HURT I KNOW. BECOME ALONE YOU HELP WON’T. <em>(Damian is only just settling in. Please, I know the pain you are in, but isolating yourself won’t help.) </em>Alfred perched hesitantly on the edge of the bed, careful to keep his hands fully visible. PLEASE STAY HERE. WE-TWO HELP D-A-M-I-A-N W-A-Y-N-E BECOME MUST-NEED. B TELL D-N CAN’T –despite himself, Alfred’s hands fumbled the shapes and he had to quickly stop lest he become incomprehensible –CAN’T. CAN’T. <em>(Please stay. Help me bring him into the family properly. Bruce can’t –he can’t, now.)</em></p><p>Cassandra seemed to turn his request over in her head, but even by the first motion of her hands Alfred could tell he hadn’t managed to convince her. BROTHER-NEW NEED ME NOT, WANT ME NOT. I TELL D-N, LISTEN WON’T. D-K TELL D-N, D-K HELP YOU WILL. <em>(Little brother doesn’t need or want me. He won’t listen even if I try. Dick is here, he’ll be able to help.) </em>FAMILY –Cassandra paused and wiped at her eyes before she continued. ALONE MUST-NEED, DON’T KNOW TIME HOW-MUCH. I HAVE EMOTION A-LOT, I STAY, HURT FAMILY WILL. <em>(I need space. I need time. I’m feeling too much, I’ll hurt them if I stay.)</em></p><p>“My dear girl, <em>you</em> will hurt more by doing this,” Alfred tried again, but she wasn’t Bruce’s daughter for nothing.  At his words she looked up at him with a steely, determined expression on her face, and when she responded her signing was sharp and exaggerated.</p><p>UP TILL NOW I HURT LITTLE BIT, I HURT MOST NOW. T TELL ME FINISH, FAMILY HAPPY WITH SAD. MORE SAD MY FAMILY I GIVE CAN’T. <em>(I hurt more now than I ever have before. This is what Tim told me being a family would bring. I can’t add anymore to my siblings’ pain.) </em>But then she briefly touched her hand to Alfred’s arm, and when his granddaughter went on, he knew it was for his benefit alone. COME BACK WILL. PROMISE. I LEAVE-[go away] NOW MUST-NEED <em>(I promise to come back. But I have to go, first.)</em></p><p>“...I understand,” horribly, he did. A part of him wanted to do the same with every death he had weathered in his life. But <em>he</em> was no longer the young man without anything tying him down. He made sure to stand so he could embrace her, and murmured his own request into her hair. “Take your time to heal. But never forget you are a Wayne, and you always have somewhere to come back to. And family who want you here.”</p><p>///</p><p>Tim found him in the study, where he was sorting through mail correspondence. Had things been right, Bruce would be the one flipping through envelopes at the breakfast table with a mug of tea next to him. But ever since Cassandra left them, Alfred had been thinking that nothing at the Manor would ever return to feeling right again.</p><p>He knew already, that Tim was leaving as well. He had heard the arguments about Tim’s belief that Bruce was not dead at all, but he had kept himself out of the heat of the moment and instead spoke with both of them in the aftermath. He encouraged Richard to keep the issue from Damian and tried to bring Tim back a little by mentioning that the boy still needed a tour of the gallery.</p><p>At the time, Tim had said he would think about it. Now, Tim waited until he had set down the stack of mail onto the desktop before he closed the study door, and it was only then that Alfred found the strength to meet his tired eyes and hear his goodbye.</p><p>“I’m leaving,” Tim frowned deeply, and the resemblance to Bruce in that moment stopped Alfred from interrupting. With a sharp movement, Tim pushed away from the door and stood in the middle of the room in a stiff, formal posture Alfred hadn’t seen him adopt in years. “My plane is scheduled soon. I’m sorry.”</p><p>“I understand you feel strongly about this, Master Tim,” Alfred did not try to move closer to the young man before him, acutely feeling that he was fighting a battle already lost. “But we need you here as well. Miss Cassandra has already gone to Hong Kong, Master Jason is in <em>space</em>... please, I can only bear so much.”</p><p>It worried Alfred to see the thinness of Tim’s face and the dark circles under his eyes –he didn’t need a bloody <em>quest</em>, he needed rest and his family to care for him. If only Alfred had watched closer, done better at seeing the same signs from when Bruce had prepared to go off into the world himself.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Alfred, I’m too selfish,” Tim’s mouth stretched into a brief, sardonic grin. “I know you don’t believe me about Bruce. That’s fine –you’re too practical to dwell on ‘what-ifs’, you keep us grounded. But that’s not me.” Tim turned away, toward the window on the far wall underneath which Bruce used to sit whenever he wanted to talk candidly; he looked away again just as quickly. “Besides, the brat hates me. He tried to kill me when we first met and then when he tried to actually <em>warn us </em>about Ra’s al Ghul I drove him off. We may be brothers, but there’s no way he’d let <em>me</em> talk to him about the Waynes. I’m <em>beneath</em> him.”</p><p>“When one <em>needs</em> something, they do not have the luxury of choosing who gives it,” Tim shook his head in response, whether to the sentiment or the particular situation, he couldn’t be sure. Alfred bowed his head, ashamed of himself for accepting this. “But then, you cannot be expected to give to someone who does not <em>want</em> it. Please take care of yourself, Master Tim.”</p><p>The tension in Tim’s frame eased somewhat, and when Alfred approached and grasped his shoulder, Tim allowed himself to be pulled into his arms. Alfred hated the way his grandson’s hands clutched tightly at his waistcoat.</p><p>“You are, and always will be a treasured member of this family. Do what you need, and come back when it’s done,” Alfred pleaded. “Things will be better when you do, I promise.”</p><p>///</p><p>
  <em>“Fuck no.”</em>
</p><p>“Master Jason,” Alfred bit his tongue at the note of scolding that wanted to colour his tone, lest he say something they would both regret. Jason did not deserve to be treated like an errant child, not before and certainly not now. Complicated feelings about his father aside, the last few months had been hard on everyone, not only those who remained in Gotham. “I only wanted... you have the right, you are <em>family.</em>”</p><p><em>“Well, I won’t,”</em> <strong><em>I’m not, </em></strong>he didn’t say. Their fragile facade of politesse during these infrequent phone calls kept Jason from exposing the worst of his anger. He more than likely knew how much it would wound Alfred to hear him <em>admit</em> he wasn’t confident Bruce loved him in the aftermath of his unexpected return. After a minute of strained quiet, his grandson sighed gustily across the line. <em>“I wanted to, once. <strong>You</strong> know,” </em>indeed, as <em>he </em>had been the one to field Jason’s persistent questions on the family over those months. <em>“But I –Alfie, when I came back, I get it. Grief doesn’t last forever, and with as big a shitshow Bruce became, it’s good he got the kid. But I missed my chance. An’ I-”</em></p><p>Jason stopped talking, and there was some low murmuring in the background for a few seconds before his voice came back into range.</p><p><em>“I won’t come back <strong>now.</strong> Especially not for some stuck up kid who never appreciated what he had till it got ripped away. Hits a little too close to home,” </em>Alfred’s heart ached. Jason was with people who cared deeply about him, he knew –he had met Roy Harper and Princess Koriand’r only once, after the funeral. They would keep Jason as safe as possible no matter where they ended up. But it still pained him, to think of everything Jason left unsaid even at his most candid –Bruce had done much the same when he tried to keep himself from breaking apart.</p><p>“I understand. I’m simply... trying to do right by the boy, as I did with all of you,” there was more silence between them, and again Jason was the one to break it when he roughly cleared his throat.</p><p><em>“You never did us wrong, Alfie,” </em>Alfred swallowed around the lump in his throat and clutched at the phone, wishing he could embrace Jason even across however many miles separated them. Around him, with Batman and Robin out on patrol, the Manor was oppressively empty. More so, because they would be moving to the penthouse in the next few days. “<em>If nothing else, just let it lie. Wait it out. Can’t imagine Dickface’ll pass it up, but if it turns out no one wants to teach the brat but you, eventually he’ll crack and you can get the chore out of the way.”</em></p><p>“Oh, Master Jason,” he knew part of it was just the rough way he spoke, but sometimes Jason really seemed to believe that his connection to the family was a closed book, good for nothing but collecting dust. “Even if you cannot come back, please at least know you are always, always welcome. And that it was <em>never</em> a chore. It was a privilege.”</p><p>///</p><p>They were in the penthouse kitchen, nearly six months to the day of the funeral, when Alfred finally found a spare moment to bring up his request to Richard. For once Damian was out for the night, suffering the recovery period for the latest strain of Fear Gas, and instead of patrolling on his own Richard had asked Barbara to keep an eye on the city in case of emergencies. They had eaten supper in uncharacteristic quiet due to Richard’s worry over the boy, and as they washed the dishes together Alfred finally put voice to his thoughts.</p><p>“Master Richard,” he began, and his grandson made a tired noise of acknowledgement. “I have thought that time was needed before I spoke to you about this, and it has been nearly half a year. Master Damian needs to learn about the family.”</p><p>Richard’s spine straightened instantly, but he kept his hands busy drying and did not look up from his task, “I thought you would’ve –already spoken to him. He hasn’t said anything.”</p><p>“Master Damian is prideful, I doubt he would,” Alfred handed Richard another plate and frowned at the way Richard’s hand was shaking slightly. He turned to look into his face, but Richard didn’t really seem to be <em>looking </em>at him –there was a glazed tint to his eyes. “Master Richard? Are you quite alright?”</p><p>The second Alfred’s hand touched the crook of Richard’s elbow, he flinched back and nearly dropped the plate. Alfred managed to catch it before it hit the floor and set it gently on the counter, worry bubbling up as Richard backed up a few steps until his hip hit the side of the island in the centre of the kitchen. The young man shook his head a bit and blinked rapidly, and after a few moments covered his mouth with one of his hands. He looked faintly pale.</p><p>“I don’t think I can do it,” Richard blurted, and the part of his expression Alfred could make out was guilty and brittle, not emotions anyone normally associated with Bruce’s firstborn. Richard swallowed thickly and curled in on himself, forehead creasing deeply in sharp contrast to the previous ease of the evening. “Jesus, Alf, I –I <em>can’t.</em> I know Damian needs it, I know I should –I’m the <em>eldest</em>, but I can’t, I <em>can’t.</em>”</p><p>Alfred was taken aback –Jason’s offhand remark about Richard not refusing had reflected what they both expected to happen, but it appeared that, yet again, he hadn’t seen the warning signs of... whatever this was. His mind flashed back to the discussions he had with Richard about not being present for Tim and Cassandra’s introductions, and he gentled his voice when he next spoke.</p><p>“Why ever not? You did a fine job, with Master Jason,” Richard let him get closer, but still didn’t appear to be fully present. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head again, hunching further in.</p><p>“An’ then Jay <em>died,</em>” he rasped, and it was like a dam was opened. “Then I –I couldn’t be there for Tim, it was too fresh, and I treated Cass like shit, I didn’t <em>deserve </em>to be there. I thought, for Damian, maybe I could get B-Bruce to –to –and I could help him, but now –<em>now-” </em>To Alfred’s deep, deep concern, it seemed like Richard was about to break down completely.</p><p>Over the last six months, Richard had professed to being ‘fine’ more often than anyone, and Alfred hadn’t believed him. But when he went out in the cowl he was calm and a good mentor to Damian, and when he was home he was steady and perhaps a touch more melancholy than he used to be –Alfred had watched, determined not to miss things like he had with Tim, but Richard was Bruce’s <em>son</em>. He <em>knew</em> how to hide the things he didn’t want others to see, and maybe Alfred was too used to reading Bruce to know how to catch what Richard tried to conceal.</p><p>“Bruce is <em>gone</em>. He’s gone,” Richard whispered, and the way he said it broke Alfred’s heart all over again. “So is Jason, even though he’s alive. Cass won’t call, and I didn’t –fuck, I drove Tim away myself, practically told him he was crazy to his face. I’m barely filling Bruce’s shoes as Batman, forget about the family. I can’t go through that big empty gallery and have to end it by saying –here, Damian, we’re what’s left of all this. Our father’s dead just the same.”</p><p>“<em>Dick</em>,” Alfred said, and when Richard’s eyes finally shot up to meet his he pulled his first grandchild into his chest despite the fact that Richard was now as big as he was. He still remembered the slim, bright eyed boy sitting on the kitchen counter after supper, swinging his legs to and fro as he waited for Alfred to box up the leftovers for the next day. Richard did not hug him back, but leaned into him all the same.</p><p>“Please, please, I’m trying. I’ll give Damian everything else but <em>please </em>don’t make me go through that, Alfred,” the fabric on Alfred’s shoulder was getting wet as Richard pressed his face into it, so Alfred hugged him tighter. “I can’t –I won’t be able to handle it.”</p><p>“Don’t fret, I understand,” Alfred soothed, shushing Richard as he sobbed, probably both in relief and guilt. “I am here for you, my dear boy, you don’t have to handle this. I know you want to take care of Master Damian, be a good big brother to him, and you are doing an admirable job. But please, you must think of yourself as well. Master Bruce –he wouldn’t want to lose you to grief. I don’t want to lose you to it either.”</p><p>///</p><p>Alfred had been employed by the Waynes since he was in his early twenties –longer than Bruce had even been alive, although there were only a handful among the living who cared to remember this. He was hired not even a full year after young Thomas Jr passed, and over the course of those early years he grew to see Martha and Thomas as two of his dearest friends. When they brought Bruce into the world, he had still intended for his tenure to remain short –but life, fickle as it was, decided that ten minutes in the dark of a Gotham alley would be enough to change every single one of his plans.</p><p>So he remained in Gotham, and later, when Bruce left to travel the world he waited patiently for his return –regardless that he was forever gripped by the fear that he would receive another call in the night. He had always cared for Bruce, but it wasn’t until he was alone in Wayne Manor with nothing but the occasional letter to ground him that he really understood just <em>how much</em> he cared. The boy who had left the Manor came back a young man with eyes that looked at Gotham City and all of its crumbling history and decided that <em>he</em> would be the one to save it, in any way he knew how. Were Alfred a lesser man, he may have balked at the intensity of his –employer, ward, <em>son</em> –and kept professional lines where they ought to remain.</p><p>But he held himself to a high standard, just the same as Bruce did. He could do <em>nothing </em>less than support the man Bruce had grown into, through every trial and tribulation life tried to throw their way.</p><p>Tragedy nearly battered the Wayne family into extinction. In the face of such a history, the addition of children into their lives over the last eighteen years brought him indescribable joy. Alfred hoped that, like their father, Bruce’s children would never have any cause to doubt that he loved them deeply. They were all different in so many ways, all brought into the Manor through circumstances outside of their control. There were no few challenges over the years –too many arguments, so much death and sorrow, and several terrible, <em>blessed </em>reunions –their family would never be a normal one. But Alfred had done his best by this family, always, even when he wanted nothing more than to <em>forget.</em></p><p>This is all to say, when it came to Damian, Alfred’s best had never been enough. Unlike his siblings, the boy took one look at his father’s butler and categorized him as such; yet for Alfred, the lines between family and work had only blurred further together ever since Thomas steered him into a hospital room one cool night and allowed him to be Martha and Bruce’s first visitor. It remained unspoken, but Alfred saw all of Bruce’s children as his own grandchildren, and he hoped that Martha and Thomas wouldn’t begrudge him the sentiment. But for Damian there was little to be said to convince him otherwise once he made his mind up, and Alfred could not push too far.</p><p>He had made the offer before approaching Damian’s siblings, of course he had –it was before Bruce left on that last mission, and he spoke to the boy and asked if he could tell Damian about his family history. Explained that he had done so for each of his siblings in turn and this was something he wanted to make sure Damian received just the same. In those early days he hadn’t been able to read the boy easily, but he was able to tell that –whatever Damian thought of the topic –his offer upset him in some manner. He had flatly refused, and Alfred had respected his decision. Later, when he could not bring himself to insist on it, when it didn’t hurt quite so much to think about, he told himself that Bruce would forgive him this lapse of dedication.</p><p>Miracles such as Jason’s return did not happen twice. Bruce was gone, and Damian... Alfred told himself the boy simply needed time. Eventually they would have their talk, but to expect it so soon was crass and insensitive. In the meantime, he would try to hold the family together just as he always had, and always would. Even when they wanted to pretend like they didn’t need him to.</p><p>And then, one day, almost out of the blue –Alfred turned around, and Bruce was there, and a part of him he thought would scab over alongside Martha and Thomas was torn back open. And he had never felt more grateful for the pain.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I appeal to you, if I get anything wrong with the ASL glossing or grammar please lmk, I am legit learning in real life and want to catch any mistakes I make.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Damian (al Ghul) Wayne</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Yo y’all! This took a long time but I hope you like it! The last chapter will take longer but I’m committed to finishing... let’s say before my region’s lockdown is finished?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Pennyworth was the first to inform him about the significance of the gallery to the family. In the early days after Damian’s arrival to the Manor, before Father’s death, he had presumed to offer to tell him the history of the Waynes. Of course he declined –it was a duty that should fall to his Father alone. But, Damian knew that Pennyworth was not merely the family butler, as evidenced by the glares his ‘siblings’ shot him whenever he implied such, and so he resolved to forget the incident. To Pennyworth’s credit, the man did not push.</p><p>Damian had barely known his Father before he was gone. He had to make peace with this fact, and as with many things in his life, his Mother’s training was both a blessing and a curse. He could accept death as a fact, had seen it time and again all through his life –but to accept that a warrior such as his <em>Father </em>had succumbed to such a banal end...</p><p>He had to make peace with it, and he did. Just in time for Cain to run off to Hong Kong and for Drake to disappear on his hair-brained quest, and then the only people left were Pennyworth and Grayson –because Todd didn’t count, whatever it was he did with those ‘Outlaws’ of his. So they were alone in Father’s big, empty Manor, and while Grayson had taken on the mantle of Batman in Father’s stead and made Damian Robin, there was something off about him whenever they went on patrol that made Damian tense. No one mentioned anything about the family at all, if they could help it, and –it was suffocating, that’s what it was.</p><p>The League of Assassins didn’t dwell in grief.</p><p>So, whenever Grayson and Pennyworth were busy or seemed absorbed in their quaint ritual of washing up after dinner together, Damian went and explored the ancestral home of his family.</p><p>Before he arrived, Mother had told him of Father, of course, as well as the Wayne family that came before him –the dossier was compiled matter-of-factly and laid out the most notable members of the family along with their accomplishments. He knew that the earliest records were from an area on the border of Scotland and England called Waynemoor –long since renamed and the exact location of which was lost to history. He knew the German branch of the family was gone, most due to the first World War but the rest had been killed during the Holocaust. He knew that when they came to America, the Waynes had originally tried to settle in Trenton before ultimately moving to Gotham for the business the booming port would bring. He knew his great-great grandmother had been the one to really place the company and therefore the family itself on solid financial ground.</p><p>But the paintings –he hadn’t <em>known </em>that there would be so many <em>paintings</em>.</p><p>Grandfather demanded his perfection in their family craft, yes, but also in the skills that any man of class and wealth was expected to wield. Damian knew multiple languages, advanced maths, could dance and play the Qanun, and could sketch and paint as well as any of the teachers he studied under over the years. But Grandfather did not suffer those who wore their thoughts on their sleeves, and so Damian did not often let on exactly how much he enjoyed putting pencil or brush to paper.</p><p>Alone in the gallery with an ear out for Grayson or Pennyworth, Damian was allowed to look his fill. According to his research, the Waynes did not retain a particular artistic lineage for their various portraits, but had exercised their philanthropic tendencies and hired new or struggling painters whenever they had need of them. Barring the few paintings from the European side, looking into the background of each artist also revealed an overwhelming number born in Gotham itself.</p><p>It made the gallery an eclectic sight. Most high class families preferred to show only a united, polished front to any outside observers, but Damian didn’t have to have been in the Manor long to know this wasn’t the case with the Waynes. Father’s primary concern had been fooling anyone looking to figure out Batman’s identity, but beyond that he hadn’t done much in the way of raising the family’s public prestige. Charitable undertakings aside.</p><p>The paintings were all set into mismatched, if expensive, frames. Some were as smooth as paper with the understated tones of warm brown and grey and would have begun chipping had they not been meticulously maintained. Others, however, were close to sculpture the paint was layered on so thickly and stood out like bright, gay windows into another time period. Still more were life-like to an extreme Damian had yet to capture in his own work, and despite himself when he passed them the hairs on the back of his neck wanted to stand on end.</p><p>The subjects, mostly, tended towards the typical subdued posing of each era, but even in this there were outliers. Catherine Wayne nee Van Derm had a sprawling painting depicting her astride a Clydesdale horse, a vision of strength and valour compared to the records of her frailty and chronic illness. Abigail Wayne had several paintings portraying her smiling ambiguously, as if she was barely restraining a laugh while sitting for the artist –but her small section of the gallery also included a number of photographs. A particularly noteworthy set depicted her with a few other women in remarkably plain dress for her status, and then sitting on a horse drawn float covered by a banner which read, ‘Women Vote in Ten States –Why Not New Jersey?’, then a newspaper clipping of her presenting the state governor with a written petition.</p><p>Bruce Nathan Wayne was also present, not in a painting but in a professional photograph dated just a year before his murder. The man looked very much like a descendent of Catherine, far more than Father or Thomas Wayne did, and he was standing close to another man, arms tight around each other’s waists, the both of them smiling. Bruce Nathan and Tanner Guerrero had lived in Coast City in California, and Mother’s information revealed that all these years later, his widowed partner was still there, visited every other year or so by Father.</p><p>It was chaotic and too sentimental, and it should have turned the nose of any interior designer or wealthy visitor –but Damian couldn’t help but love it. It showed that he was born to a family that cared to remember its past, which was a novelty after his childhood; Grandfather and Mother were outliers in Pakistan in that they never spoke of the family nor kept anything recorded. Damian supposed he could understand Grandfather’s reticence, as a failsafe for anyone seeking to take advantage of perceived weakness. But Mother never spoke of it either –anything Damian knew he had been forced to go searching for himself.</p><p>Just like he had to now, with Father gone. He supposed death was an acceptable excuse, this time.</p><p>There were heirlooms as well, although not exactly what Damian would have envisioned if he was asked. Underneath two photographs from the 1930s there was a small journal, ‘recreation of the personal journal of Margot Wayne, 1943', which Damian paged through carefully. He had a basic grasp of German and gleaned from the pages that the family had begun preparations to flee the country, but somehow all of them would still be dead by the following year. Mother’s dossier hadn’t covered how that had happened.</p><p>There were scattered military medals from Europe, given that the Waynes in America had never participated in service unless compelled by a draft. An embroidered handkerchief with the initials DJW was framed neatly on the wall near to a portrait of a couple dressed in the fashion of the late 1800s. In a case sat several wooden toys, carved beautifully yes, but simple children’s toys all the same. Not far away was a hiking cane with a brass handle in the shape of a flat disk, the Wayne crest carved into it and still polished to a shine.</p><p>Damian circled around to the family tree and grew frustrated when he saw names on it that Mother hadn’t covered, people he couldn’t easily connect to the various paintings on the walls or the objects displayed proudly and with care, and worse –the four others who had seen all of this before him, connected to Father’s name while <em>his </em>hadn’t been added! And all of them, even <em>Drake</em>, bore the Wayne name in some form. Cain wasn’t even listed with her natural father’s name, simply with ‘Wayne’ as if <em>she</em> were born to any right to it.</p><p>Father’s death date hadn’t even been added yet. Like the moment Pennyworth decided to send the tapestry away it would solidify that all of this was real and so he was putting the duty off. It was naive and weak and it made Damian sneer to think about anyone not being able to face reality like that, especially this elderly man whom the family was so attached to and <em>dependent </em>upon.</p><p>Damian scoffed and turned away, unable to stand what he was <em>sure</em> was irritation at the sight of the birth date under his Father’s name and the blank space ready to be filled underneath it. Even if Pennyworth couldn’t –and Grayson <em>wouldn’t</em> –do anything to rectify this, Damian forced himself to push it from his mind. It’s not like it would matter for much longer, now that there was talk of shutting the Manor up and moving into the penthouse in downtown Gotham.  Until he reached his majority and had any legal say in the decisions of the family, this was yet another fact Damian would have to come to terms with. He had enough practice by now that he could convince himself it was easy.</p><p>///</p><p>When Father returned –<em>he hadn’t been dead at all, just like Drake said, just like <strong>Drake</strong> maintained even in the face of everyone in the family implying he was <strong>insane</strong> –</em>the family gradually returned to a semblance of normality. Damian hadn’t exactly been around for long enough before Father’s <em>disappearance </em>to know exactly what normal was supposed to look like, but based on conversations with Richard and Pennyworth over the seven months without Father, he could take an educated guess.</p><p>Normal was Drake heavily involved in Wayne Enterprises in preparation for his succession and Cain splitting her time between the family and Barbara Gordon. Normal was Richard and Pennyworth doing the dishes together and then descending into the Batcave for a night of patrol, both ready to give Father a stern talking to if he was injured or acting thick in the head. Normal was Brown popping up in the middle of patrol and sassing Father as if she wasn’t intimidated by him, and Oracle manning the comms for the night from her clocktower. Normal was Todd keeping radio silence while in Gotham and making the superhero gossip channels while running with the Outlaws, each new mission they undertook carefully compiled in the computer by Father in the aftermath (an alert set to tell him if ever they were in over their heads and he could help). <em>Normal</em> was Father never pushing outright if any of those under his wing told him to back off, because he trusted them to know their own limits and they all accepted he was going to keep an eye on them in any case.</p><p>With Father back, all of those things were still true, but they were no longer the <em>only </em>normal.</p><p>Drake was still involved with WE, but now split his time between the Manor, the Teen Titans and an apartment he kept in Gotham’s downtown. Cain more often than not was the one in the Manor, but she had begun to hang around Brown both on patrol as well as in civilian life. Pennyworth seemed to be in better spirits than ever and in even better form when it came to his support of their vigilante work, while Oracle not only directed their comms but did side work with a team called the ‘Birds of Prey’.</p><p>Back to Nightwing now, Richard still lived primarily in Blüdhaven but made an effort to stay for full weekends at the Manor and no longer took <em>any </em>backtalk from Father –not that Father tried very often. They seemed to have settled into an actually equal partnership now that Richard had taken on the mantle of Batman for over half a year, and this translated to their personal relationship as well. Father treated Richard much more like the respected eldest son he had always claimed him to be, and there were, by Drake’s estimate, much fewer arguments in the Manor now than there used to be.</p><p>Even Todd and Father had come to an uneasy truce. There was some sort of to-do with Black Mask, an Amazon and a clone of Superman that exploded a few weeks after Father’s return, but the confrontation Richard had quietly braced for had never arrived. Father left to ‘speak with’ Todd and returned unharmed and calm, and just the other day the gossip circles had been ablaze with talk of the Outlaws again, now doubled in size in terms of membership.</p><p>And while Father still did not push if one of them told him they didn’t require his help, he was <em>far </em>more present than Damian expected him to be. From being clued into comms every patrol to the advice he gave on troublesome cases the others were working, to even making sure to talk with them all as <em>Bruce Wayne</em>, it threw Damian off. Mother had told him what to expect from Father, that he was a great man of strength and integrity who was often consumed by his work, so he was to do his best to support him and not distract from it.</p><p>It was hard to keep that in mind when, occasionally after coming back from patrol in the early hours of a cold morning, Father prepared hot chocolate or checked in on them before going to sleep. It was hard to think of him as a monolith of single-minded focus on his mission when before dinnertime, he always made a point to set the table while Pennyworth was plating the food. Or when he approached Damian one evening in late September and far from his usual solid confidence, his expression and body language read embarrassment and trepidation.</p><p>“Damian, may I come in?” Damian put down the paperback he hadn’t quite been paying attention to and nodded, so Father approached and took a seat on the edge of the mattress a few feet away. “How is your shoulder feeling?”</p><p>Damian had wrenched it on patrol the day before and had been benched until it fully healed –Richard had managed to convince him over his early career as Robin that he should expect to be given extra <em>time</em> to recover instead of extra <em>training </em>to correct his time off. Damian had finally resigned himself to the idea once Father proved to believe in it as well.</p><p>“I will need a few more days,” he said, mouth set into a neutral line –if Pennyworth didn’t suffer embellishing of the truth, Father most certainly wouldn’t either. Father nodded once and smiled slightly at him, approving.</p><p>“That’s good. I remember when Dick was young he was so used to the trapeze routine that he was a little hellion if he got injured on patrol,” Father’s smile grew bigger, as it usually did when he thought about Damian’s eldest brother’s childhood here. “I’m glad you had him to be there for you.”</p><p>Oh, this was going to be a serious conversation? Damian straightened his spine slightly and folded up his legs so he could sit at level with Father. “Of course Richard was there. He made me Robin.”</p><p>“I mean as family,” Father glanced around the room and Damian wondered what conclusions he was making –some of the decor was Richard’s influence, back when he was pushing Damian to explore civilian life. “While I was –gone, did Alfred take you through the gallery?”</p><p>Though he kept perfectly still, Damian’s full attention focused onto his father. This was unprecedented –everyone had always implied that Father was simply too overcome by grief to even think of broaching such a topic as the family history. “He did not,” Damian said, and watched as his father nodded once more, with a low exhale like he expected it. However, after he was silent for a few moments too long, Damian decided to be perfectly clear. “He offered, of course. But I wanted you to do so.”</p><p>“And I will,” Father must have seen some emotion on his face, because the grin he sent him was partly sad, partly amused. “I suppose you’ve gathered that I haven’t for your other siblings?”</p><p>“It wasn’t hidden,” was all Damian could say.</p><p>“It’s true. I left it to Alfred, though...” Father shifted on the bed into a more relaxed pose, one leg pulled up underneath him and the other dangling off the mattress –he very much looked like he didn’t belong in this setting. “I did <em>want</em> to. When Dick came to live here, it really was too hard for me to face. It had been just me for nearly twenty years by that point. Then with Jason, Dick and Alfred took it upon themselves –but I would have, if they hadn’t been so quick.” Father shook his head ruefully, and the grin dropped a few more shades. “I don’t have any excuse for neglecting Tim or Cassandra that way. Whether I was hurting or busy, I should have pushed myself to get over it. I want to make that effort for you, Damian.”</p><p>Before he went and lived with Richard and Pennyworth in the penthouse, Damian might have preened at the unintended implication that Father’s newfound effort was due to their blood relation. That Father hadn’t been able to push himself for the others because they didn’t matter as much. But... something made him refrain from voicing any of those thoughts. Father’s assertion that he was ready to do so for <em>Todd </em>was surprising, as Mother had always made it seem as if he were the black sheep of the flock. That he saw not doing so for Drake or Cain as <em>neglecting</em> them was also a factor. Really, though, it was the flash of a memory from one night in the penthouse, when he had woken up from a Fear Gas induced fever and crept out into the hallway to see Richard crying into Pennyworth’s shoulder.</p><p>
  <em>“-that big empty gallery and have to end it by saying –here, Damian, we’re what’s left of all this. Our father’s dead just the same.”</em>
</p><p>The way he said it –<em>our father –</em>stuck in Damian’s brain even when he tried to push it away. He supposed it hadn’t really registered before that moment that not only did his father consider the others as his siblings, but they in turn also considered <em>him</em> their brother.</p><p>“Thank you,” was what he settled on, in the end. Then Damian glanced at the clock and noticed how late it was. “Do you not have patrol, Father?”</p><p>To his surprise, Father shook his head. “I asked Dick and Kate to take care of it for me. If you aren’t busy, we could start right now?”</p><p>Damian wasn’t about to pass up the chance and have Father’s busy schedule delay it indefinitely, so he agreed. They found themselves in the den on the main floor, where Father had him sit and wait while he prepared two mugs of bagged tea (Pennyworth tried to keep the stuff out of the house, but with how many time-strapped individuals lived in the Manor he could never fully ferret out the contraband). When he finally came back with a dish each of cream and sugar so Damian could make it up how he liked, he did not simply begin talking –he walked over to one of the farther bookshelves and pulled out a thick, elegantly bound photo album from one of the lower shelves.</p><p>“I don’t know where Alfred’s started this, but I... remember better with pictures,” Father opened the album to a seemingly random point, but by the flimsiness to the corners of the page it was obviously well perused. It was a big, blown up photo from a wedding, sepia toned at the edges, and Father slumped slightly as Damian inspected it. “And I don’t know what Talia saw fit to tell you, so bear with me if I retread any ground. I thought I’d work backwards from my parents.”</p><p>Like the other depictions of the Waynes, the photo wasn’t the posed, formal elegance Damian would have expected from a wealthy couple in the early 1960’s. By the background of a glittery ballroom, perhaps even the <em>Manor’s</em> ballroom, he could tell immediately that the wedding had been a society event, but his grandparents weren’t even looking at the camera. Instead Thomas Wayne, dressed in a pressed and sharp three piece tailcoated suit was smiling lopsided and was in the process of smearing a piece of wedding cake into Martha’s nose. Martha Wayne’s dress was equally as tailored and sparkling with elegant embroidery and she was in the midst of laughing, her entire face scrunched up as she registered what her new husband was doing.</p><p>“It was my favourite photo to look at, after,” Father said quietly. “Sometimes I can’t really recall how they were as <em>people</em>. I was so young, I idealized what was already a warped perception, just the parts of themselves they chose to show me. But all the photos used to be like this, easy and carefree. They lost a bit of that when they lost my older brother, Thomas Jr.”</p><p>“Mother said there was a car accident,” Damian supplied, and when Father turned a few pages and showed him a small, chubby infant it was obvious who he was looking at.</p><p>“Yes. They survived, but Junior and the driver both died. Alfred was hired a bit after the mourning period,” Father did not linger long on the photo of his late brother, and flipped to further back in time. “My mother was the eldest child of Roderick Kane, she had three brothers –you’ve met Kate on patrol, haven’t you? She’s my direct cousin. The Kanes weren’t established in Gotham very long, Roderick was the only son of an only son, and Cameron Kane immigrated from Poland just before the turn of the century. Except for Kate, there aren’t any Kanes in Gotham anymore.”</p><p>Damian had wondered at that, admittedly, why Kate Kane was not closer to the family than was warranted. Meeting Batwoman in the city, of course, showed him that she was just as stubborn and independent of a person as his father was, and if she hadn’t been raised in Gotham that went a long way to explain the distance. Father pointed out a photo of a young Martha Kane standing with her parents at some sort of birthday party, and Damian could pick out the resemblance between the parts of him that didn’t match up with either of his own parents on her face.</p><p>“And my father was the youngest of four. Uncle Phillip, here, he passed the same year as my parents, a heart attack,” where Thomas Wayne had been roughly thirty-six when he died, the much older Phillip Wayne had already turned completely grey by the time he died. “My cousins Van and Emelyn –I still kept up with them after that, but they lived out in Central City and were both already in college when it happened. Emelyn also died of a heart attack –she and her father had the same condition, and while Van had a son, Jeremy... he doesn’t want anything to do with us. Before Van died, he did not treat his family well.”</p><p>While he listed the family members who had died, Damian silently inspected the photographs he pointed out. Mother’s information had simply covered which members of the Waynes were alive –and there were so few, she had legitimately looked into the possibility of a family curse at one point, but hadn’t unearthed anything of the sort. The still images of young men dressed for dancing, or cousins gathering for Christmas, high society snapshots that seemed less glamorous by the strange faces children made for the cameras –it was no wonder that Pennyworth took on the task of reminiscing about all of this. Speaking of the dead had already brought Father’s mood noticeably lower than Damian had seen it in months.</p><p>“Aunt Agatha died very young, in childbirth. Jane was the furthest from me in age, and was very career focused –she moved to France to pursue fashion, and fell out of touch. When my Uncle Elwood died I was... six, I think, and my father took a trip over there to try and track her down so she could attend the funeral," Damian could predict exactly what his Father was going to say by the way his forehead creased as he smoothed out a wrinkle on a photo of a young family –a redheaded white woman in jeans holding an infant and a black man next to her with thick sideburns and a carefully styled afro. “Unfortunately, she had died several years beforehand –Paris in the 60s was a bit of a hotbed for the drug trade. Her husband and son were still alive, but they also weren’t interested in keeping contact. I did track down Vincent Jr when I was traveling in my twenties, though, and he’s made something of a poet of himself.”</p><p>“Poetry?” Damian asked, a slightly dubious note filtering into his tone even though he wasn’t trying to be difficult. It was simply that Father sounded incredibly proud of Damian’s... second cousin, for a profession that Mother and Grandfather had certainly not thought much of. Poetry was supposed to be a hobby.</p><p>“I have all his books, I’ll show you at some point,” Father smiled and looked down at the album for a moment, and then abruptly picked out a large section of the pages and flipped to close to the back of it.</p><p>It was the same portrait that hung on the upper landing of the main stairs, of Father as a small child standing sedately with Martha and Thomas, all of them quietly content. Father flipped the page, and then a picture of Richard, brightly grinning at the camera with the arms of a man and a woman –his <em>parents</em> –encircling him was where he landed. On the page directly opposite, there was a photo of Todd, so young as almost to be unrecognizable, sitting in a battered, threadbare armchair with a thin, fair haired woman next to him and a book in his hands.</p><p>Damian could also predict where Father was going with this, and his stomach churned.</p><p>The next two photos were different; the first was of Janet and Jack Drake, but Drake himself was not in the picture, and the other was of Father and Cassandra on the steps of the courthouse with the elder and junior Gordons. Damian had already seen these in their full sized, painted versions that hung in the gallery, so after a cursory glance at each he snuck a glance at Father’s face as well. He had never seen him smile so fondly as he was doing right now.</p><p>“Alfred’s added a painting for everyone else’s families-” Father stopped abruptly at the small, frustrated huff Damian let out of his nose, and for a moment looked caught off guard. Eventually his eyes only narrowed slightly and he went on, but he was studying Damian closely now. “So, if you have a photo, perhaps of you and Talia that you want to have in the gallery, let me know. I’ve already had your name added to the family tree, I can show you after this. I don’t think I can talk about the rest of the family right now, so I’ll tell you about how your siblings came to live here.”</p><p>Damian nodded, but his sour expression at the thought of Father re-establishing how he had <em>chosen </em>each of the others must have been too deep, because Father’s gaze turned sharp.</p><p>“<em>Damian, </em>they <em>are</em> your siblings.”</p><p>That <em>wasn’t </em>what was making Damian’s chest twinge, so Damian couldn’t help but snap, “Well they aren’t your children.” He didn’t want to hear Father hammer it in again –but at the expression on Father’s face he shrunk back a little, a curl of guilt and trepidation in his gut. He suddenly had the thought that maybe pushing when Father was in a dark mood may not have been the best idea. He didn’t take the words back, though.</p><p>“They <em>are </em>my children. I doesn’t matter if they were adopted,” but it seemed Father wasn’t going to let the issue lie this time. Damian puffed up, ready to argue the point, but he held his tongue when Father pointedly held a hand up. “I’m going to make this very clear. I consider all of you my children, blood doesn’t factor into it. I don’t love any of your siblings less than you because they weren’t born to me –and I don’t love you more than them because you’re my blood son. I love all of you, make no mistake.”</p><p>“But –but <em>you-</em>” Damian cut himself off the moment he realized he was losing his composure, his entire face hot with some emotion he couldn’t place. Father’s face smoothed into a careful blankness, and it took a lot of concentration for Damian not to avert his eyes from the intense stare.</p><p>“Why does it matter, Damian?” Father asked plainly.</p><p><em>Why did it matter? </em>Damian wanted to demand Father explain how it <em>didn’t </em>matter to him, how the fact that Damain was his <em>actual son </em>didn’t sway him in the slightest. How could it not matter? It <em>had </em>to, because if it didn’t that meant that Mother had been wrong about what he should expect from this man, wrong about how his Father would see him, and if <em>that </em>was wrong –</p><p>It meant Damian had no right to be here. It meant he was the only one of Father’s children whom he hadn’t <em>chosen, </em>the only one who he had been forced to take care of. That far from what he was <em>convinced </em>of those first few months in the Manor, <em>Damian</em> was the charlatan here, trying to mimic the others and failing with every harsh word, every reminder of who had raised him and what he had been taught to become.</p><p>It meant he had no guarantee that Father’s favour would not vanish the instant he went too far –and that he had no earthly clue what <em>too far </em>was anymore.</p><p>The longer Damian remained silent, unsure if it would be a greater weakness to admit his reasoning or to not give one at all, the more troubled Father looked. After a full minute stare-off, however, the crease in his forehead eased again and Father levered himself up off the sectional they had been sitting on.</p><p>“I want to show you something.”</p><p>Father abandoned the photo album without a second glance, and Damian rose as well and dutifully followed his Father out of the den, nerves tightening in his chest. They passed Todd in the entrance hall; the older boy scowled fiercely and didn’t quite look Father directly in the face when he muttered that he was only around to see Pennyworth, but Father didn’t appear bothered by the disrespect. He merely nodded tightly and said he was glad to see him in any case, before he placed a hand on Damian’s shoulder and steered him towards the gallery.</p><p>“I am already familiar with the gallery, Father,” Damian couldn’t help but mention, confused despite the fact that he was glad to have an excuse to study the paintings again.</p><p>“There’s always more to learn,” Father said ambiguously, and brought him over to the tapestry of the Wayne family.</p><p>It was just as it had looked when Damian had last pushed the curtain aside –obviously a British influence in the layout, with the style of the edging similar to the old Germanic embroidery Damian had looked up to confirm his suspicions. The only bit he could see that was different was the leaf with his own name on it that had been added to the stylized vine which connected Father’s name to those of his older siblings.</p><p>“There’s a stylistic difference on the tapestry between you and your siblings,” Father stated, and if Damian didn’t already know that Father was trying to deliberately lead him to this he would’ve been offended at the clumsy opening. All the same, he obliged and inspected the delicate leaves stitched onto the woollen backing. He graciously deigned not to mention the persistent death date underneath Todd’s name and instead opted for the obvious.</p><p>“The decorative vines connecting theirs to yours possess a silver edging,” he squinted a little harder and huffed a breath from his nose. “But it isn’t genuine metallic thread. It’s synthetic.”</p><p>Father’s eyebrows ticked up in surprise, but he nodded and smiled slightly. “That’s right. We switched to synthetic when Dick’s name was added to reduce the need for upkeep,” Damian nodded in understanding –metallic thread had a tendency to tarnish and this piece was already in danger of light and insect damage as it was. “Granted, we haven’t <em>maintained </em>it as well as we should, given how old it is. It really should have some parts fully restored...”</p><p>Damin stiffly waited for Father to get to the point, not particularly following why this exercise was necessary.  So far all it was doing was implying that there <em>was </em>a tangible difference between he and his siblings, quite contrary to Father’s earlier words.</p><p>“We’ve been going through my father and his siblings, but I want to know if you see anything among my grandfather’s generation. It’s alright if you miss it, it’s hard to catch,” Father said, so Damian followed the line from Father to Thomas Wayne and then up to Patrick Wayne, his great grandfather. The man had three siblings, only one of whom had any children, and his wife, Jeanne, had been the only child of an émigré French couple. Beyond a slight discolouration in the main fabric which started in this generation, Damian could not see anything he would point out as ‘amiss’.</p><p>“I... do not see it, Father,” he admitted. Father hummed in a sort of agreeable tone and didn’t even look disappointed that he had failed.</p><p>“Like I said, it’s difficult. Here, look closely at Abigail while I...”</p><p>Damian did so, and Father produced a small penlight from his pocket. As soon as the ray of light hit the tapestry, the silver thread near his siblings’ names sparkled noticeably –but so did the edging on two of the names connected to Kenneth Wayne. Abigail, as Father had suggested, but also –</p><p>“I don’t understand,” he blurted before his brain could stop him.</p><p>“Silver thread tarnishes, as I mentioned. I’ve been meaning to arrange for all the metallics in the tapestry to be replaced,” Father explained, which <em>explained nothing. </em>Father looked at him sidelong with an unreadable expression, and Damian tore his eyes away from the family tree to stare at the wall close to the floor. “Damian, look at me.”</p><p>He didn’t want to, but disobeying was much, <em>much </em>more disrespectful than the backchat he had become used to getting away with, so he steeled himself and met Father’s gaze.</p><p>“Mother never –said,” he admitted haltingly, that same strange emotion rushing in as his face went hot, hot, <em>hot</em>. Like a horrid blend of shame and disbelief and embarrassment all fighting to get out.</p><p>Father sighed, and knelt down so he was at Damian’s eye level. “For better or worse, Talia has never loved Bruce Wayne as much as she does Batman. Because of that, she was never brought into the family, and –I don’t know if she would have been interested if I offered. So there are things she doesn’t know.” Father sighed again and glanced at the tapestry briefly. “My grandfather never hid it; he had the support of the family and every legal advantage available. I suspect his actions during his life eventually made the circumstances of his birth supremely uninteresting. There aren’t many records which even care to mention it now.”</p><p>Father caught his eye again, and reached out to hook one of his solid, warm hands on Damian’s shoulder. “Damian, if the Wayne family cared about adoption versus birth, it’s very likely I wouldn’t even exist. Dick and Cass and Jason and <em>Tim, are </em>my children, just as you are. I love you all, I want all of you here with me, and nothing can change that. Alright?”</p><p>Damian clenched his fists and looked down at his shoes and opened his mouth to spit a scathing remark, but what came out instead was –“But you never wanted <em>me</em>.”</p><p>Father froze and Damian’s spine stiffened further at the <em>weakness</em> he was exposing, the ugly, shameful childishness he couldn’t stuff back into his head. Father hadn’t known about him, Father simply had the obligation dropped on him one day without warning and accepted it out of familial duty; and Damian was too <em>different </em>from the other children Father had claimed as his own, too prone to invoking Father’s disapproval or rebuking his siblings and he couldn’t stop, he <em>wouldn’t –</em></p><p>“Damian,” Father’s tone of voice was so close to Batman’s that Damian instinctively stood to attention, knocked out of his spiralling thoughts. “If I didn’t want you here, you wouldn’t be here. It’s crude, but you know I’m telling the truth,” Father was so much <em>taller</em> than he was, and Damian was vacillating between finding it intimidating and taking comfort in it. “If you’re... insecure about your place in this family, please don’t be. Yes, you were unexpected, but so were all of your siblings. Once I chose to take you in, that was it for me. You’re my child, I would never undo that or send you away, or stop loving you. Do you understand?”</p><p>Logically, yes. Truthfully, he couldn’t even begin to. Maybe Father saw that contradiction in his face, because he gently took his hand off of Damian’s shoulder and instead used it to pull Damian into a hug.</p><p>Eventually, Father got around to telling him about the rest of the family. This was after he went through the circumstances of meeting each of Damian’s siblings –a circus accident, a tire theft, the secret of his identity broken, and a silent girl working with Barbara Gordon. This was after Damian pulled a photograph from his bag and brought it to Pennyworth to ask for a painting to be arranged for the gallery. This was after he told Richard that Father had spoken to him about the family already, when his oldest brother approached him about the topic.</p><p>Eventually, Damian thought he understood. But until he did, Father made sure to remind him, and that proved to be a good substitute in the meantime.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>